Presented to the
LIBRARY of the
UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO
h
THE ESTATE OF THE LATE
COL. R. S. TIMMIS, D.S.O.
CHARTERHOUSE IN LONDON
CHARTERHOUSE
IN LONDON
MONASTERY, MANSION, HOSPITAL,
SCHOOL
BY GERALD S. DA VIES, M.A.
MASTER OF CHARTERHOUSE
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS
LONDON
JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET, W.
1921
(All rights reierved)
DEDICATED
TO ALL
WHO
BEAR OR WHO HONOUR
THE NAME
CARTHUSIAN
PREFACE
I UNDERTOOK this history at the expressed wish of some
Carthusians in the year of the Tercentenary of Thomas
Sutton's Foundation, 1911. While doing so I knew well
that there are many living Carthusians who, by reason
of their literary capacity, are far more fitted for the task.
But I also could not but know that a combination of
opportunities had fallen to me which can never again
happen to any man living or to come. These opportunities
are the result of accident. I can claim no credit for them,
but rather I recognise in them a duty which they impose
upon me. For I was for nine years a Foundation Scholar
in London, during which time I developed a love for the
place and a zeal (not according to knowledge) for its tradi-
tions and antiquities. I was afterwards for nearly thirty-
three years on the staff of the school at Godalming, during
which time I was in constant touch with my friend, the
Reverend Henry V. Le Bas, Preacher of Sutton's Hospital,
who never failed to communicate to me every step by which
he made clearer the topography of the monastery and of
the mansion. He was, and I take this opportunity of
recording my gratitude, my first trainer in a complicated
study. Lastly, fortune has ordained that I should return
to the home of my boyhood, as Master of Charterhouse, a
post which naturally opens to me not a few doors which
are closed to most others. These combined opportunities,
stretching over the fifty-eight years of my Carthusian days,
have enabled me to collect very much information, which
from time to time has been revised, recast, verified, rejected,
till the notebooks have swelled to many volumes. These
vii
viii PREFACE
notes would be almost unintelligible, even if legible, to
any other but myself. And I have therefore accepted
the duty of arranging them into a coherent sequence
while life is left to me.
To the advantages which I have recorded, and of
which I fear I shall have made but an inadequate use,
must be added that of having survived into a day when the
unearthing of much entirely fresh material has enabled
us to explain much which before was inexplicable, and to
set right a great many errors into which the earlier writers,
for lack of this material, inevitably fell. It may well be
that the discovery of further material in the Record Office
or elsewhere will fill many a gap which I have had to leave,
and will add my own name to the list of those whose
histories need correction. I have made it my endeavour
to state nothing in positive terms for which I have not
found authority. It would be impossible always to quote
that authority without cumbering the page with footnotes.
I have been careful also to try and give to such words as
" undoubtedly," " probably," " possibly," their exact value
in the scale, and where mere suggestion is used to let it be
clearly seen as such. I cannot hope that I have fallen
into no errors of my own, after correcting the errors of
those that have gone before me. I can only claim that I
have taken pains to avoid them. In writing the records
of a place which in some shape has touched history either
in the lives which were being lived within it, or in the
lives of those that went forth from it on almost every day
of its existence since 1349, it is inevitable that some
mistakes will have crept in, certainly inevitable that
many and many an interest should have been left out.
I have already expressed my debt to Mr. Le Bas. I
owe cordial thanks to many another. To Mr. H. S. Wright,
Assistant Receiver of Charterhouse, for help ungrudgingly
given both in the Muniment Room and in the Record
Office. To Dom Laurence Hendriks, author of the
London Charterhouse, for many kindnesses. To Father
P. N. Pepin, the Prior of Charterhouse, Parkminster, for his
generous gift tome of the"Disciplina Ordinis Carthusiensis."
PREFACE ix
To Mr. H. M. Underdown (O.C.) and to Sir William St.
John Hope for much useful guidance, and to many others
who at home or abroad have in this way or in that given
me the help without which this book would have been
impossible.
GERALD S. DA VIES.
THE MASTER'S LODGE,
CHARTERHOUSE, LONDON
July, 1914.
Postscript. — The gap between the date of the preface
(1914) and the date of issue (1921) needs no explanation.
September, 1921.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
BIBLIOGRAPHY xvii
I. THE ORIGINAL SITE 1
II. PABDON CHUBCHYABD ........ 4
III. NEW CHURCHE HAWE (THE MONASTERY) .... 8
IV. SIB WALTER DE MANNY — BISHOP MICHAEL DE NOBTHBURGH 18
V. ST. BRUNO AND THE CARTHUSIAN ORDER .... 26
VI. THE CABTHUSIAN RULE AND CABTHUSIAN MONASTERIES . 34
VII. THE STORY OF OUR MONASTERY FROM 1371 .... 54
VIII. THE MONASTERY IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY ... 75
IX. THE SUPPRESSION 87
X. THE LAST YEARS OF THE MONASTERY 99
XI. " QUOMODO SEDET SOLA CIVITAS " 106
XII. THE MANSION PERIOD — EDWARD, LORD NORTH— THE DUKE
OF NORTHUMBERLAND — LORD NORTH, 1545-64 . . 114
XIII. HOWARD HOUSE — THE FOURTH DUKE OF NOBFOLK . . 123
XIV. HOWABD HOUSE AND THE RlDOLFI PLOT .... 133
XV. HOWABD HOUSE UNDER PHILIP EABL OF ARUNDEL . . 143
XVI. HOWARD HOUSE UNDEB LORD THOMAS HOWARD, EABL OF
SUFFOLK, 1601-11 155
XVII. THE PABBIC OF THE MANSION UNDEB NOBTH, NORTHUM-
BERLAND, AND NORFOLK 161
XVIII. THOMAS BUTTON 168
XIX. THE IMMEDIATE SEQUEL TO THE FOUNDER'S WILL . . 194
XX. THE FOUNDEB'S TOMB . 214
xii CONTENTS
CHAPTER PA.O«
XXI. THE EARLY DAYS OF BUTTON'S HOSPITAL .... 223
XXII. THK SCHOOL 247
XXIII. RAINE — RUSSELL — THE MADRAS oa BELL SYSTEM, 1791-1832 262
XXIV. SAUNDERS — ELDER ELWYN — HAIG BROWN .... 273
AFTERMATH . 282
APPENDICES
A. DETAILS OF THE EXISTING BUILDINGS OF CHARTERHOUSE (1914) . 807
B. DOCUMENTS RELATING TO THE MONASTERY 318
I. Will of Sir Walter Lord of Manney . . . .318
II. Will of Michael [de Northburgh], Bishop of London
(abstract) 319
III. Extracts from MS. in the Record Office. Ghartularies of
Charterhouse, 61 820
IV. Other Benefactions to the Monastery . . . 321
V. Sir Robert Rede's Chapel of St. Catherine in the Church
of the Monastery 322
VI. The Belongings of a professed Monk of the London
Charterhouse, Jan. 1519-20 823
VII. Agreement between John Ffereby and the Prior of
Charterhouse for the Water Supply, 1430 . . . 325
VIII. Declaration of the Commissioners at the Surrender of the
Monastery, 1537 326
IX. Inventory of the effects in the Suppressed Monastery
reported by William Daylle (1538) . . . .330
X. The MS. life of St. Hugh, once in the Monastery Library
of Charterhouse, London, by Adainus Carthusiensis . 335
C. DOCUMENTS RELATING TO THE MANSION 337
I. License of Henry VIII to John Bridges and Thomas
Hale, 1542 337
II. Grant by Henry VIII to Sir Edward North of the
suppressed Charterhouse, 1545 337
III. Conveyance of Charterhouse from Sir Edward North to
the Duke of Northumberland, 1553 . . . .338
IV. Grant of Charterhouse from Queen Mary to North after
the execution of Northumberland, 1553 . . . 339
V. Conveyance of Charterhouse by Lord North to the Fourth
Duke of Norfolk, 1565 339
VI. Survey of Charterhouse 1590 after the attainder of Philip
Earl of Arundel in 1589 340
CONTENTS xiii
PAGE
VII. Grant by Queen Elizabeth of Charterhouse to Lord
Thomas Howard of Walden [afterwards Earl of
Suffolk] in 1601 342
VIII. Eenewed Grant of the same by James I in 1603 . . 343
IX. Extract of letters patent of June 22, 1611, to Thomas
Sutton for the Foundation of Charterhouse . . 343
X. Extracts from the Will of Thomas Sutton . . .344
XI. Extract from the Account-book of Richard Sutton . . 347
XII. Estimate and Details of Founder's Tomb . . . 347
D 349
I. Masters of Button's Hospital 349
II. Preachers of Button's Hospital 349
III. Schoolmasters [Head Masters] 360
IV. Eegistrars . 351
V. Governors of Charterhouse 351
VI. Governing Body of the School 360
E. SOME DISTINGUISHED CABTHUSIANS 362
F. CABMEN CABTHUSIANUM 367
G. THE ROLL OP HONOUB, 1914-1918 368
INDEX 441
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
FACING PAOK
Howard House Pa9ade — Long Gallery . . . Frontispiece
Charter of Sir Walter de Manny 12
Fragment of Manny's Tomb (1372) 18
Aumbry in Monks' Church 18
St. Bruno. By Houdon 23
A Cottage Cell, Mount Grace .34
A Cell Door, Mount Grace 34
A Lay Brother (Gonversus), Miraflores 48
A Worker (Donatus), Miraflores 48
Cell Door of B Cell (1371) 57
Cell Door : East Side of Great Cloister (1371-1900) .... 57
Site of the Monks' Burial Ground 60
Plan of Water Supply (c. 1435) : Great Cloister 74
Washhouse or Lavendry Court, West Wall 84
The Oak Door (c. 1512). The Norfolk Lions (1565-71) ... 96
The Chapel (the Right Aisle is the Monks' Church) . . . .112
The Great Hall 126
Norfolk's Arcade (Cloisters) 130
Washhouse or Lavendry Court (Lay Brothers' Quarters) . . . 136
The Great Staircase (1565-70) 138
The Great Hall, from Master's Court 148
General Plan of Howard House 160
Portrait of Thomas Sutton 170
Berwick Bridge 176
Berwick Ramparts .......... 176
Lady de Manny (Margaret Mareschall) 186
Elizabeth Sutton 186
Brothers' Library (Gownboy Dining Hall) 210
xvi LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
FACING PAGE
Stools in Brothers' Library (c. 1500) 210
The Founder's Tomb (Nicholas Stone) 214
Chapel Tower, from Master's Lodge 230
The Great Chamber (Governors' Room) 238
Costume of early Gownboys, Seventeenth Century .... 246
Costume of a Brother, Twentieth Century 246
Entrance to Chapel 260
Pundator Noster 304
Founder's Tomb (Detail), 1615 304
Elevation Plan (1755) . .306
Lay Brothers' Entrance to Church 308
Great Hall, West End 308
Slype from Lavendry (Washhouse) Court 314
Passage from Master's Court 314
The Pensioners' Court (1826-30) . .316
BIBLIOGRAPHY
OF THE CHIEF BOOKS AND MSS. RELATING
TO CHARTERHOUSE
ADAM CARTHUSIENSIS. The Life of St. Hugh. A MS. once in the library
of the Monastery. Given to Charterhouse by Bernard Quaritoh, O.C.,
in 1913 (see Appendix B, X).
BABBETT, C. B. B., with a Preface by GEOBGE E. SMYTHE. Charterhouse
in Pen and Ink, 1611-1895. London, 1895.
BEABCROFT, PHILIP, D.D., Preacher and Master of Charterhouse. An
Historical Account of Thomas Sutton and his Foundation in Charter-
house. London, 1737.
Blue Books (Charterhouse School Lists. Results of General Examinations :
Scholarships, etc., beginning 1814).
BOWER-MABSH, B.A., and P. A. CRISP, P.S.A. Alumni Carthusiani. A
Record of the Foundation Scholars of Charterhouse from 1614 to 1872.
Privately printed, 1613.
BBOWN, JOSEPH. The tryall of Thomas Duke of Norfolk by his peers for
High Treason against the Queen, for attempting to marry Mary Queen
of Scots without the consent of the said Queen Elizabeth. London, 1709.
BULLOCK, ALBERT EDWARD. Some Sculptural Works by Nicholas Stone,
Statuary, A.D. 1586-1647. B. T. Batsford : London, 1908.
CECIL, WILLIAM, LORD BUBGHLEY. A collection of State Papers relating to
affairs in the reign of Queen Elizabeth. Edited by William Murdin.
London, 1759.
Calendarium Botulorum. MSS. Public Record Office.
Carthusian, The. [1st Series.] A Miscellany in Prose and Verse. [The
School Journal.] 2 vols. London, 1839.
Carthusian, The. [2nd Series.] School Journal from 1871. Godalming.
CHAMPNEYS, BASIL. Two Articles in Architectural Review, Vols. X.f XI.
1891-2.
Chartularies of Charterhouse. MSS. in Public Record Office.
CHAUNCY, DOM MAURICE. A professed member of the London Charterhouse.
Translated into English from the Latin. Burns and Gates : London,
1890. First Edition of the same in Latin about 1546.
xvii B
xviii BIBLIOGRAPHY
CONDEB, EDWABD. Records of the Hole Crafte and Fellowship of Masonry :
with a chronicle of the Worshipful Company of the Masons of the City
of London. Sonnenschein : London, 1894.
CBIBP, P. A., F.S.A. See BOWER-MARSH.
DAYLLE, WILLIAM. Caretaker of the suppressed Monastery, 1537. In-
ventory of goods received in charge. State Papers. MSS. Domestic.
80 Henry VIII g^j. Public Record Office.
DOBEAU, DOM VICTOB MARIE, Prieur de la Chartreuse de Saint Hugues
a Parkminster. Henri VII et les Martyrs de la Chartreuse de Londres.
Paris, 1890.
DUGDALE, SIB WILLIAM. History of St. Paul's. London, 1658.
Monasticon Anglicanum. London, 1693.
EABDLEY-WILMOT, E. P., and STBEATFIELD, E. C. Charterhouse Old and
New, with four etchings by D. Y. Cameron. London, 1895.
FBOUDE, JAMES ANTONY, M.A. History of England from the Fall of Wolsey
to the Spanish Armada. London, 1900.
GASQUET, FRANCIS AIDAN, Abbot and Cardinal.
(a) English Monastic Life. Methuen : London, 1904.
(b) Henry VIII and the Monasteries. George Bell & Sons : London,
1900.
Greyfriar, The. The Illustrated School Journal from August, 1884.
Godalming.
Greyfriars, Papers from. The School Journal, 1860-1861. London.
GUIGO, DOM, Prior of La Grande Chartreuse. Statuta Ordinis Cartusiensia
Jo : Amorbach. Basle, 1510.
HAIG-BBOWN, WILLIAM, LL.D., Head Master of Charterhouse, Master of
Button's Hospital. Charterhouse Past and Present. Godalming, 1879.
HAIG-BBOWN, WILLIAM, H. of Charterhouse, written by some of his pupils.
Edited by Harold Haig-Brown. London, 1908.
HALE, WILLIAM HALE, M.A., Archdeacon of London, Preacher and Master
of Button's Hospital. Article in The Carthusian, 1839.
HENDRIKS, DOM LAURENCE, Monk of St. Hugh's, Parkminster. The London
Charterhouse. London, 1889.
HEBNE, SAMUEL. Domus Carthusiana, or an Account of the Noble Founda-
tion of the Charterhouse, near Smithfield, in London. London, 1677.
HOPE, W. H. ST. JOHN, M.A. Mount Grace Priory. Yorkshire Archaeological
Society, Vol. XVIII.
LE BAS, REV. HENBY, M.A., Preacher of the Charterhouse. London. The
Founding of the Carthusian Order. Article on Mount Grace Priory,
Yorkshire Archceological Society, Vol. XVIII.
LEFEBVRE, L'ABBE F. A. Saint Bruno et L'ordre des Chartreux. Paris,
1883.
MACAULAY, LORD. History of England from the Accession of James II.
Edited by C. H. Firth. London, 1913.
BIBLIOGRAPHY xix
MACHLYN, HENRY, Citizen and Merchant Taylor of London. Diary from
1550 to 1563. Edited by John Gough Nichols. London, 1848.
LB MASSON, INNOCENTIO. Disciplina ordinis Cartusiensis, printed at the
Carthusian Monastery at Montreuil-Sur-Mer, 1894. [The Statutes of
Guigo (g.v.) with copious notes and comments by I. Le Masson.]
Minutes of the Governors of Charterhouse from 1614. MS. in Charterhouse
Muniment Boom.
MS. relating to Charterhouse. Carta Walter! Domini de Manny Fundatori
Novae Domus Salutationis, Matris Dei, etc., 1371. Charterhouse Muni-
ment Room.
MS. relating to the Foundation of the Monastery and to its history up to
circa 1480 in the Public Record Office [referred to throughout this book
as M.S.M.I. = MS Monachi ignoti].
National Biography, Dictionary of (2nd Series, 1908).
NORFOLK. The Lives of Philip Howard, Earl of Arundel, and of Anne Davies
his wife. Edited from the original MS. by the Duke of Norfolk, Earl
Marshal. London, 1857.
NORTH, EDWARD, Fourth Baron. Some Notes concerning the Life of Edward
North (First Baron). London, 1682.
PARISH, REV. W. D. List of Carthusians, 1800-1879. Lewes, 1879.
ROPER, WILLIAM JOHN DOFF. Chronicles of Charterhouse by a Carthusian.
G. Bell : London, 1847.
SHARPE, REGINALD R., D.C.L., Editor. Calendar of Wills proved and
enrolled in the Court of Hustings. London, 1889.
SMYTHE, GEORGE E. See BARRETT.
SMYTHE, ROBERT. Historical Account of Charterhouse by a Carthusian.
London, 1908. [With many transcripts from original documents in
the Appendices.]
STOW, JOHN. Survey of London, reprinted from the text of 1605. Edited
by C. L. Kingford. 2 Vols. Oxford, 1908.
STHEATFIELD, E. C. See EABDLEY-WILMOT.
STRTPE, JOHN. Annals of the Reformation. Reign of Queen Elizabeth.
London, 1709.
TAYLOR, WILLIAM F. The Charterhouse of London. London and New
York, 1912.
TOD, ALEXANDER HAY, M.A. Charterhouse. G. Bell : London, 1900.
CHARTERHOUSE IN
LONDON
CHAPTER I
THE ORIGINAL SITE
IN the first half of the fourteenth century the ground
which Charterhouse afterwards covered was open space,
regarded by the populace of London as common land.
The distance in a straight line from the Gatehouse or
Porter's Lodge to the nearest point of the City wall, near
Christchurch, was a short half-mile. Between these two
points, a little to the west, lay the Priory and Hospital
of St. Bartholomew founded by Rahere, 1123 ; while to
the north-west, and scarcely a long stone's throw from
what was to be the Charterhouse boundary, lay the Priory
of the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem, founded in 1100.
Few other buildings of a permanent nature as yet existed
outside the walls, but hard up against the Church of
St. Bartholomew were clustered the booths and stores of
Cloth Fair, which flourished under a monopoly granted
by Henry II to the Florentine Arte di Calimala — the
Guild of the Clothdressers and Dyers. Here every two
years during several centuries was held the great fair
where the matchless dyes of Florence were sold for English
use. The open space in front of St. Bartholomew, known
as the Smoothfield (Smithfield), and, indeed, the adjoining
wastes and meadows, were the unclaimed playing fields
of the already overcrowded yet small city. The lands
towards the north had long been known as No-man's
land, and appear in Domesday book as Naneman's land
1
2 THE ORIGINAL SITE
with the value of 5 shillings payable to William, as once to
Edward the Confessor. Here were held tournaments —
none more notable than that of 1389. We are told how
the ponds, Horsepond, Todwell, Loderswell, Foxwell, etc.,
now filled in, were used for watering the horses after the
jousts. Horse races, foot races, games such as quintan
and bowls, were played here. It was the resort also of
horsedealers and copers. And the Smithfield Elms or
Gallows served as the place of execution for the city.
More to the north towards Iseldon (Islington) the land,
full of natural springs, became more or less of a fen, or
water meadows. These springs were destined to form
thereafter, as we shall see, the water supply of Charterhouse.
In the year 1348 bubonic plague set foot upon the
shores of England, not, indeed, for the first time, as is
often said, for there had been an earlier outbreak in the
sixth century. But this greater visitation, which came to
be known in later years as the Black Death, was the first
of the long and terrible series which did not end till 300
years had passed. Starting, it is agreed, from Southern
Russia near or in the Crimea, it had already swept through
Southern Europe. It had been specially rampant in 1348
at Avignon, where the papal court under Clement VI
suffered severely. In July or August, 1348, it reached
Melcombe Regis (Weymouth), in Dorset, then a great
seaport, whither it had been probably brought by ship
from Calais. A few months served to carry it through the
western towns, Bristol, Gloucester, Wells. By the end of
the year it had reached London, and by the end of January,
1349, it had paralysed the great town. There were at
that date 120 parishes within the city walls, which included
a space measuring about 2200 yards by 1156 only, and
holding, according to the best authorities, a population
of about 45,000. The churchyards, most of which were
already some centuries old, were soon full to overflowing.
The dead lay in the streets or were flung into the river.
Three new burial-grounds were hastily opened. The first
was near the House of the Nuns of St. Clare — a branch
of the Franciscan (Minores) order — near the Tower, in
THE ORIGINAL SITE 3
what is now known as " the Minories." Of this graveyard
we have little record. It served its purpose but made no
history. The other two, Pardon Churchyard, in Clerken-
well, and New Churche Hawe, next Smithfield (the two
graveyards, as we shall see, adjoined), mark the beginnings
of the history of Charterhouse.
CHAPTER II
PARDON CHURCHYARD *
THE plague, we are told, was at its worst in London from
about Candlemas (Feb. 2) to Pentecost, 1349. In January
or February Ralph de Stratford, Bishop of London from
1340 to 1354, bought from the Knights Hospitallers 3
acres of the land known as No-man's land lying " between
the lands of the Abbot of Westminster and the lands of
the Priory of St. John of Jerusalem." The position of this
plot is well known to us. It lies, though now thickly
covered with buildings, in the angle formed by the crossing
of St. John's Road and Clerkenwell Road (Wilderness
Row). It became, in 1370, part of the estate of the
Priory of Charterhouse, and, through all the changes of
ownership which have befallen that estate, it has never
been separated from it, and at this moment (1913) it is
the property of the Governors of Sutton's Hospital.
About Candlemas, 1349, then, Ralph Stratford acquired
this plot of 3 acres, to which he gave the name of Pardon
Churchyard, surrounding it presently with a brick wall
and building there a chapel, where masses might be said
for the souls of the dead. This churchyard f continued in
use for two hundred years for the burial of those who died
of plague (from 1348 onwards till late in the seventeenth
* Our Pardon Churchyard must not be confused with the Pardon
Churchyard of St. Paul's, which contained a chapel founded by
Gilbert, father of Thomas a Becket, and a cloister painted with the
Dance of Death. These were destroyed by the Protector, Edward,
Duke of Somerset, and the stones were used in the building of
Somerset House. (Dugdale, Monast.)
t A rude figure of this chapel is seen in the plan of the water
supply to the monastery (date 1431, preserved in the Muniment
room at Charterhouse).
4
century few years passed without some visitation, more or
less serious), for suicides and for executed criminals. The
bodies, Stow tells us, were carried thither in a close cart
draped with black, having a plain white cross on it, and
with a St. John's Cross in front, and with a bell which
rang by the shaking of the cart for the warning of passers
by. This cart was known as the Frarie or Friary Cart.
The chapel had Privilege of Sanctuary.
The plan shows a small building rather high for its
length and breadth, having two tall gable ends and a
fleche bearing a large cross halfway along the ridge, with
a large window at the east end and two similar windows
on the north. It must, however, not be appealed to for
more than a general resemblance of this historical little
building.
Pardon Churchyard became, after the foundation of
the monastery, the freehold of the Carthusian monks, and
so remained till the suppression. But, by agreement
between the Priories of Charterhouse and of St. John, it
was in the hands of the latter, who provided for its service
and appointed the Frairie Clerk, or priest of the chapel.
Thus, early in the sixteenth century, Sir Thomas Docwra,
Prior of St. John of Jerusalem, signs a deed appointing one
Travers to the office ; and again in 1522 (Sept. 18) one
Corrall succeeds him. This fact has misled some writers
into the belief that Pardon Churchyard belonged to St.
John's Priory. But the explanation must be sought in the
conditions of the Carthusian Rule. A Carthusian monk,
living in entire seclusion from the world, does not undertake
any ministry outside his own cloister, save in exceptional
instances. He does not serve mass, nor preach sermons,
nor visit the sick, nor bury the dead, save by special
exception. It would be an unheard-of thing for a monk
of the order to become the chaplain of a cemetery such as
Pardon Churchyard. That may be said to be the general
rule. But in the case of our Charterhouse it had been
found necessary at the visitation of 1405 * for the visitors
to prohibit the monks expressly from even going to meet
* M.S.M.I.
6 PARDON CHURCHYARD
the bodies of those who were brought to the cemetery of
Charterhouse Yard (Square) at the outer gate, so strict
was the view upon the point. Hence, the service of Pardon
Churchyard was, in like manner, as that of Charterhouse
Square, left to other hands.
After the Suppression Pardon Churchyard formed part
of the grant of the monastery made by the Crown to Sir
Edward North in 1545. The latter, now Lord North, in
1558, gave a lease of it to Thomas Parry * and his wife,
and in 1565 conveyed it, with the rest of the suppressed
priory, to Thomas Howard, Fourth Duke of Norfolk, from
whom it passed to his son, Philip, Earl of Arundel. After
the attainder of the latter, 1589, it reverted to the Crown,
and Queen Elizabeth granted a lease of it to Thomas
Goodison.f It was part of the grant of the Queen to
Admiral Lord Thomas Howard, Earl of Suffolk, in 1596,
and again of James I in 1604 to the same nobleman,
from whom in turn it passed to Thomas Sutton.
Already in 1598 Stow wrote of it : i; The chapel is now
enlarged, and this burying plot is become a fayre garden
retayning the old name." It is noticeable that the price
put upon it when North sold it to Norfolk was £320.
After Sutton's day, while Clerkenwell was still a pleasant
place of residence, it had successive occupants of good
position, but it followed the descending fortunes of its
neighbourhood. We learn from Maitland that in 1739 the
quoins of the old chapel were still to be seen in the four
corners of the dwelling-house. All trace of chapel and
churchyard have long ago disappeared, though from time
to time when the ground has been opened, as in 1820 and
1834, and probably whenever a foundation has been dug,
the evidences of its old uses are brought to light. A black-
smith s shop and a Baptist Chapel successively marked
the site of Pardon Chapel, which to-day must be sought
some 100 yards from the west end of Great Sutton Street,
the sad and sorry thoroughfare which now runs under
one name from St. John's Street to Goswell Street, but
which formerly its eastern half bore the name of Swan
* C.H. Mun : B. f C.H. Mun : B.
PARDON CHURCHYARD 7
Alley. It was here that, according to Defoe, the later
plague of 1666 found its worst material amongst the
wretched habitations, forty-three in number, which had
grown up there around Swan Alley Market.
The very name of Pardon Churchyard has now passed
away. But long since the eastern portion of Clerkenwell,
which runs along the north wall of Charterhouse, was still
allowed to retain its name of Wilderness Row, and to
remind us of the time when the white monks wandered
here in their wild garden among their rose trees and their
rosemaries. And in the writer's own school days the
western end of Wilderness Row narrowed just at its
juncture with St. John's Street to a mere passage, closed
by a bar, which still bore the name of Pardon Passage.
The name is found in Wyld's Map of 1825 in the British
Museum. It has seemed well to trace the history of this
interesting appendage of Charterhouse, because hitherto
hardly a writer from Stow onwards has failed to confuse
it at some point with Charterhouse Churchyard (Square),
and even with New Churche Hawe, i.e. the monastery
itself, to which we may now proceed.
CHAPTER III
NEW CHURCHE HAWE (THE MONASTERY)
THE third burial-ground which was opened to meet the
need of London in the Black Death in 1349 was the Spital
Croft or New Churche Hawe, which twenty-three years
later, in 1371, was to become the House of the Salutation
of the Mother of God — otherwise called Charterhouse.
It is at this point that a certain manuscript in the Record
Office becomes of predominant value to us. It has
strangely escaped the notice of previous historians of the
place ; yet without reference to it many of the difficulties
connected with earlier history of the monastery could not
have been set at rest.*
The MS. is clearly a compilation from documents
belonging to the monastery, made by a monk who seems
to have done his work during the last thirty years of the
fifteenth century, since the last event recorded by him is
of the date 1481. The authorship is, of course, unknown.
The name of the learned Carthusian writer, Father Rock,
who was in the London cloister about that time, naturally
suggests itself. Dom Hendriks mentions that doubts have
been felt whether Father Rock is not really one and the
same as Dom Richard Roche, who became prior about
1488. In the list of priors given in this MS. the last
prior named is John Walfingham (or Walsyngham ?),
who died in 1487 or 1488. Richard Roche resigned his
post as prior in 1500, but remained in the cloister as
* I owe my own knowledge of its existence to the kindness of
Sir W. St. John Hope. The MS. is 61 in the Chartularies of Charter-
house. It will be referred to in this volume as M.S.M.I.=Manuscrip-
tum Monachi Ignoti.
8
NEW CHURCHE HAWE 9
vicar till 1512. He can hardly, therefore, be the compiler,
since his leisure after his retirement would have been
ample for the completion of his task, unless, indeed, we
suppose that he began it quite late in his life, and that
death overtook him before he had got beyond the events
of 1481. In such case, however, it is hard to explain
why in his list of priors he should have omitted the name
of Prior Tynbygh, who succeeded him. The authorship,
indeed, must remain uncertain. The question is interesting
but not important. What is important is to know that the
MS. may be trusted ; that wherever its statements as to a
historical fact * can be tested they stand the test ; and
that by comparison of its account with the facts given to
us by other contemporary documents, we are able at last
to shape a fairly coherent description of the origins of the
monastery.
Let us return to the year 1349. We have seen how
Bishop Ralph de Stratford came to the rescue of his fellow
citizens by the gift of Pardon Churchyard. At the same
moment, or a few weeks later, Sir Walter de Manny,
with the same pious intention, negotiated with the
Master of St. Bartholomew's Hospital for a close or
croft of land lying north-east f of St. Bartholomew's,
between it and Pardon Churchyard aforesaid. This plot
was 13 acres 1 rood in extent. It was known as the
" Spital Croft," and as soon as the little chapel or church
presently to be mentioned was built upon it, it became
the *' New churche hawe." Of this croft 3 acres or so
remained as Charterhouse Churchyard, or Charterhouse
Yard, now Charterhouse Square, after the monastery in
* Readers who refer to the original MS. will find a certain number
of recitals of miraculous apparitions and legends. It must be said
with regard to these that their entire removal in no way interferes
with the historical value of the rest of the MS. We may be content
to adopt the sensible attitude of the Carthusian, Dom llendriks, in
similar cases. (See The London Charterhouse, p. ix.)
t The distance from the nearest point of Charterhouse Square
to the north porch of St. Bartholomew's Church is less than 200
yards. The rough roadway, now Long Lane, a continuation of the
Barbican, lay between, a branch of the Fleet ditch wandering on
the north of the highway from Aldersgate Street to Fleet Street.
This ditch is covered in.
10 NEW CHURCHE HA WE
1371 had absorbed and enclosed the other 10 acres and a
rood. The terms on which Manny acquired the land are
thus stated * : —
*' And first they agreed that the said Lord should have
the said land to rent for 12 marks the year. Until he should
have caused another property worth 20 marks the year to
be conveyed to them in exchange for the said land, and
that they would pray for him and his and thus he held the
said croft with its belongings until the year of our Lord
1370 when he caused to be conveyed to them in exchange
for the land aforesaid [Spital Croft] the Manor of Sereclegh
in the county of Kent."
Spital Croft was dedicated as a burial-ground by Ralph
Stratford in honour of the Holy Trinity and the Communi-
cation of the Virgin Mary (the Salutation of the Mother of
God), apparently at Candlemas, Feb. 2, 1349. But seven
weeks and three days later, on Lady Day, Mar. 25, the
same Bishop, with the Mayor of London, John Lewkyn,
or Lovekyn, the sheriffs, the aldermen, and many others,
nearly all barefooted, came in procession ; and on that
day Sir Walter de Manny laid the foundation of a chapel
which twenty-three years later became the Conventual
Chapel, at the foundation of the monastery. The Bishop's
address, we are told, was upon the text " Ave." f
This chapel, whose eastern and northern walls still
exist beneath the modern panels, passed in 1611 into the
hands of Sutton's Governors, and, with many alterations
and additions, has been the chapel of the hospital since
that time.
The provision thus made by Manny for the burial of
the dead of the plague was sorely needed by the stricken
city. We may, indeed, set aside as impossible — all the
best authorities are agreed on the point — the figures loosely
given and as loosely repeated by the chroniclers of that day.
Stow, writing late in the sixteenth century, tells us
that he had seen in Charterhouse Yard (Square) a stone
cross with an inscription stating that in the year 1349,
* Ch.M.S. t M.S.M.I.
NEW CHURCHE HAWE 11
while the pestilence ruled, more than 50,000 bodies were
buried there or within the bounds of the monastery,
besides many others " up to the present time." Camden
quotes from the same inscription 40,000. The M.S.M.I.
says 60,000, but does not confine the burials to any single
year. There is, of course, nothing to show the date at
which the cross was erected. It may have been long after
the event, the mere echo of earlier exaggeration. For
Creighton, Gasquet, and others have established it that
in 1349 the entire population within the walls of London
could not have exceeded 45,000. We know also that the
plague of 1349 attacked mainly the adults of the artisan
and labouring classes, making little havoc amongst women
and children, and sparing, with a few exceptions,* the rich
and well-to-do. In a population of 45,000 considerably
more than half would be women and children. We have,
therefore, to conclude that 25,000 victims would be a
liberal estimate, and not all found their rest in Spital Croft.
Even so, however, the figures are sufficiently appalling.
The plague was at its worst from Candlemas (Feb. 2)
to Pentecost, says William of Avebury, after which it
died away, and by January, 1350, it was at an end in
London. In 1361 came a second furious outburst, known
as " pestis secunda," or " pestis puerorum," because it
chose its victims largely from the young. In the years,
however, which intervened between these two outbursts,
danger seeming to be past, a scheme was formed for
founding on Spital Croft, or New Church Hawe, either a
Carthusian monastery or some other foundation consisting
of thirteen priests. The scheme seems to have been due
to Michael de Northburgh, who became Bishop of London on
Stratford's death in 1355. Northburgh, who, as Edward's
counsellor and secretary in the French wars, had seen
much of Carthusian monasteries abroad, especially that of
Paris, had formed a very high opinion of the order. He
was himself a Dominican. Probably Manny had had
similar opportunities of forming an opinion. There was,
* Amongst the exceptions was the Archbishop of Canterbury,
who died in August six days after landing from Avignon.
12 NEW CHURCHE HA WE
moreover, a peculiar fitness in handing over to the care of
that order the soil wherein so many had found burial,
since it is to the Carthusian order above all orders that
prayers and service for the souls of the dead pertain as
part of their daily ministry. The preference both of
Manny and Northburgh was, therefore, clearly for a
foundation of the Carthusian order, but the indenture
entered into between them — which is so important that it
must be quoted at length — points to an alternative founda-
tion of another order and provides special clauses for such
an alternative.
" In the name of Jesus Amen. This is the agreement
made between the Reverend Father in God Dan Michael
de Northburg by the Grace of God Bishop of London and
Sir W de Mauny Lord of Mauny : and it is to this effect
that the said W received of the said Lord Bishop as his
first associate after himself for the foundation and advowson
and building of the Church of the Salutation of Our Lady
outside London beside Smithfield which was begun to be
built on the day of the Salutation of Our Lady in the
year of Grace 1349 according to English use to build
there a perpetual Carthusian Convent of thirteen priests
of that order if it can well be done and if not of another
order as they may agree or of a lesser number to endure
for all time to celebrate and say daily for their two selves
aforesaid and for Dame Margaret Marechall Lady of
Mauny wife of the said William * and for their children
and successors in general of this blood and for the souls
of all their ancestors of whom they have come as well as
for those who pertain to the said Bishop and for all
parents f friends and benefactors of both parties and for
all those living and dead for whom both parties are bound
to pray or cause prayer and also specially for the souls of
all whose bodies are or are to be buried there.
" Also it was agreed to this effect that the beginning of
that foundation was during the pest which was in the
aforesaid year and is in the present [year 1361] to bury
* An obvious slip for Walter. Sir William de Manny, brother
of Sir Walter, was, however, buried in the monastery.
t " Parents " used in the ancient sense of relations at large, as
it is still used in Italy.
i ,
Sill If IJff' ^:;
lllJlli j'lfll.llEilf 3 j|4|x4r i
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7 I ^ S-'3 * r. * B 1 ? -4- -a ^~ = "^ -Z- ' ?•"§- B 5 *
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. "|5
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2
NEW CHURCHE HAWE 13
there in the cemetery the bodies of all Christians and
specially of the City of London, who may wish to be buried
there both of rich and poor and both outside and on
account of the pest but specially on account of it. And
it was agreed that while the said Michael and Walter are
alive the said Walter during his lifetime ought to be the
first founder, patron, and protector and the said Michael
the Bishop his next associate as is aforesaid. And they
ought to do by our consent and assent all that pertains to
the said foundation building and property and all those
things that patrons and protectors ought to do for those
who are in England. And after the death of the said
Walter the said Dan Michael of Norbury and the assigns
of the said Bishop ought to have the patronage and
advowson for all time for ever. And that neither Margery
Mareschall wife of the said Walter nor their children nor
heirs nor any other through them shall be able to claim
any share in the advowson or patronage of the said church
except that they shall be first after the said Walter and the
Bishop in all masses memorials prayers orisons and hours.
And also that all those and those who are and shall be of
their offspring or of their own proper blood issuing from
their bodies can choose for themselves or through these
fit places when they please for each one according to his
estate for their burial both inside the chancel as in the
body of the church or in other places pertaining to the
church and the said Bishop undertakes himself or will
undertake from this time all burdens which are upon the
place and will free the said Walter and his heirs both
spiritual and temporal and of all those things there that
ought to be made a perpetual memorial remaining in the
said church. Dated at London the 9th day of May in
the year of Grace 1361." *
The provision of this indenture with regard to the
patronage and advowson is clearly inserted in case the
foundation should not be of the Carthusian order. For
a Carthusian monastery there could be no patronage or
advowson vested in any bishop. The prior is elected by
his brother monks, the election being subject to confirma-
tion by the general chapter of the Grande Chartreuse. The
* M.S.M.I.
c
14 NEW CHURCHE HA WE
document makes clear the relative shares of Manny and
Northburgh in the foundation which has hitherto been
little understood.
The indenture signed, Northburgh seems at once to
have summoned the Priors * of Witham and of Hinton,
the two Somersetshire Charterhouses, to confer with him
in London. But on their return journey the Prior of
Hinton died at Salisbury,f and the Prior of Witham (St.
Hugh's Priory) soon after reaching his home, whether of
plague or other illness is not told us. Northburgh himself
died of plague on Sept. 9, 1361, and was buried near the
west porch of St. Paul's. His will, made on May 23, 1361,
had left many mixed bequests — his entire suit of armour,
his Bible, his beaker called a " Katherine," his cope and
mitre to his successor in the see. But the passage which
concerns our foundation runs as follows : —
" Further I leave the sum of 2000£ for the foundation
of a house according to the ritual of the Carthusian Order
in a place commonly called Newe Churche Hawe where
there is a church of the Annunication of the B.V. Mary
which place and patronage I acquired from Sir Walter de
Manny : and I leave the said house when complete divers
basins for use at the High Altar, J a silver vessel enamelled
for containing the Host ; my best silver Stoup for the
holy water with sprinkler silver bell etc as well as all
my rents and tenements in London."
Bereft of its prime mover, the scheme lay fallow for a
while. Manny, now getting old, was also seriously busy
with the calls of war both in France and England, and had
lost the man to whom probably, as a soldier, he had left
the details better suited to a Churchman. But the new
Prior of Hinton, John Luscote or Lustote, inspired, no
doubt, by his predecessor, warmly espoused the scheme,
* We do not know their names. In the lists of Priors of Witham
and Hinton there is a large gap just at this period, and neither name
is recorded.
t M.S.M.I.
J These were the vessels which were removed by Thomas Cromwell
at the Suppression. The will with the fragment of Northburgh's
seal attached is among the archives of St. Paul's.
THE FIRST MONKS 15
and a few years later went to London to press the cause.
But he met with the strongest opposition in high ecclesiastical
quarters, especially from the Bishop and Chapter of Ely,
the Dean and Chapter of St. Paul's, and the Master of
St. Bartholomew's Hospital.* But in an interview with
Simon of Sudbury, Bishop of London, at Chelmsford, he
so completely prevailed, that that bishop shortly over-
rode all objections, and, in 1370, Manny applied to the
General Chapter (of the Grande Chartreuse) for licence to
build the Monastery of the Salutation of the Mother of
God near London. At Ascensiontide of that year John
Luscote as Rector (the title of Prior not belonging to an
unfinished Charterhouse) entered with his brother monks
into possession of the temporary buildings prepared for
them. Manny, about the same time, enfeoffed the prior
(Luscote) after having, as before explained, exchanged the
Manor of Sereclough in Kent for the freehold of New
Church Hawe. The names of the first monks whom Luscote
gathered to people the first cells of this celebrated priory are
recorded as follows : —
Prior John Luscote, from God's Place of Hinton ;
John Gryssely, " redditus," presently ordained priest ;
Dan John Borehulke, monk -priest from Witham ; Dan
John Netherbury, monk-priest from Witham ; Dan Guy
de Burgh, monk-priest of Beauvale ; Dan Thomas Shirley,
monk-priest of Beauvale ; Dan Roger Axelbrugg, monk-
priest of Hinton ; Brother Benedict, a lay brother from
Hinton.
At this point we meet with a name of great interest
in connection with the building of the monastery. It is
stated in Conder's Hole Art of Masonry, and by other
writers, that Henry Yevele was concerned in the early
buildings of the monastery, but no references being given
to any original documents, it seemed as if the statements
rested on tradition merely. But in the M.S.MJ. occurs
the following passage : " In the same year (1371) about
* An anchorite woman living near the church is also mentioned
as a special thorn in the side to John Luscote. M.8.M.I.
16
the feast of the Ascension of our Lord the said Lord de
Manny and the said Prior made an agreement with Henry
Revell for building the first cell and beginning the great
cloister to the fabric of which the said Lord gave 100£ and
laid the foundation." The MS. is obviously a transcript
made in late fifteenth or early sixteenth century from
earlier original documents, and the transcriber seems to
have read the Yevele of the earlier MS. as Revell. It is
worth remarking that other authors seem to have had
recourse to some document in which there was a difficulty
in deciphering the leading letter of the name, since it has
even been written in error Zevele.* There is no practical
doubt that the Henry Revell of the M.S.M.I. is no other
than Henry Yevele, the master mason, master mason
hewer (architect and sculptor in modern terms), who stood
foremost amongst English architects of his age. Born
perhaps in 1320, he was at this time at his prime. Already
he was King's master mason to Edward III for Windsor
and the Tower. A little later we find him the sculptor
of the marble work, with Stephen Lote, of the tomb of
Archbishop Langham (d. 1376) in Westminster Abbey.
Professor Lethaby | assigns to him, with good reason, the
tomb there of Edward III (d. 1377); while it is quite
certain that he, once more with Lote, was in 1394 the
sculptor of the noble tomb which Richard II set up,
close to that of Edward III, for himself and his dead wife
Anne of Bohemia. Yevele had in 1383 a share in the
Bridge of Stroud. But most of all he is to be remembered
as the director (in 1388) and designer (probably) of the
new nave of Westminster Abbey, and in 1395, at the end
of his life, as responsible for the work in the roof of West-
minster Hall. One sees, therefore, how natural it was
that such a man, highly valued at the Court, should have
been called in by Manny to do the work at the monastery,
which was to be his everlasting memorial, and in which
he designed to be laid to rest. Yevele's work, though it
fell at the moment when the Decorated Style was passing
* It is found as Yevele, Zevele, Revell, Eveleigh, Ivelighe.
t See Lethaby, Westminster Abbey and its Craftsmen.
HENRY YEVELE'S WORK 17
into Perpendicular, was, for its time, severely simple, and
therefore well suited to an order whose hall-mark was in
all things simplicity. A few time-worn stones, and still
more time-worn doorways and hatches, are all that are
left to us of Yevele's work. They tell us nothing of his
arcade around the Great Cloister, nor of the cells, nor of
aught else that came from his design in Charterhouse.
These all passed away at the Suppression. They went
forth in the shape of those loads of stone which went as
loot to the share of Layton * and his fellows, or took new
form in the great mansion that presently rose out of
their ruins.
Late in 1371, then, the first few permanent cells were
sufficiently advanced for occupation. The chapel, which,
as we have seen, had been built in 1349 for non-Carthusian
uses, now became the conventual church. For several
other essential features of a Carthusian monastery John
Luscote and his monks were to wait for many years. He
now became formally prior by the act of the General
Chapter of the Order. Manny's charter had been signed
on Mar. 28 of that year, and the foundation had received
the licence of Edward III on Feb. 6 in the same year,
from which, of course, the true history of the monastery
dates. The burial-ground of New Churche Hawe, passing
for ever from its original purpose, had now become a
Carthusian monastery under the name of The House of
the Salutation of the Mother of God near London.
* See the Report of William Daylle, 1538, in the Record Office.
State Papers, 30 Henry VIII -.
CHAPTER IV
SIB WALTER DE MANNY — BISHOP MICHAEL DE
NORTHBURGH
ABOUT Jan. 15, 1372, a few months after his monastery
had taken shape with its first cells on the west side * of
the Great Cloister, its " first founder " was laid to rest at
the foot of the high altar of the little chapel, which already
in the twenty-three years of its existence was so fully
stored with memories. His will bears date some six weeks
earlier, St. Andrew's Day (Nov. 30) of 1371. It contains
these words : —
" My body to be buried at God's pleasure but if it
may be in the midst of the quire of the Carthusians called
Our Lady near West Smithfield in the suburbs of London
of my foundation but without any great pomp and I will
that my executors cause 20 masses to be said for my soul
and that every poor person coming to my funeral shall
have a penny to pray for me and for the remission of my
sins."
Then follow some of the rich picturesque touches which
lend such a colour to wills of that date. We read of a
girdle of gold, of a hook for his mantle, of a garter of gold
(the order of the GARTER), of knives and beds and dossers,
" except my folding bed [his camp bed ?] paly of blue
and red [his bearings] which I bequeath to my daughter
of Pembroke [Margaret Plantagenet, wife of John de
Hastings, Earl of Pembroke].' Then once more a reference
to his foundation.
* The door and hatch of one of these cells (B) still remains. The
hatch of a second cell (C) is also visible, and, not without question, I
can trace the portion of cell (D).
18
FRAGMENT OF MANNY'S TOMB. 1372.
AUMBRY ON EAST WALL: MONASTERY CHURCH. 1319-1371.
MANNY'S TOMB 19
" Also I will that a tomb of alabaster with my image
as a knight and my arms thereon shall be made for me like
unto that of Sir John Beauchamp in St. Paul's in London.
I will that prayers be said for me and for Alice de Henalt
Countess Marshal. And whereas the King oweth me an
old debt of 1000 pounds by bills of his wardrobe I will
that if it can be obtained it shall be given to the Prior and
Monks of the Charterhouse. And whereas there is due to
me from the Prince [the Black Prince] from the time he
has been Prince of Wales, the sum of C marks per annum
for my salary as Governor of Hardelagh [Harlech] Castle
I bequeath one half thereof to the monks and Prior of the
Charterhouse and the other half to executors of my will."
Manny's wish was carried out, and on the day when the
best and bravest of Edward's knights was lowered to his
rest, there stood about the grave the King himself and all
the King's children, and the chief of the Barons and nobility
of England. John of Gaunt, his friend and comrade in
arms— doubtless also present — gave to the monastery
wherewith to pay for 500 masses for the dead soldier's soul.
Dame Margaret Brotherton (Plantagenet), his wife, was at
a later date also buried in the chapel, we know not where.
So, too, his brother Sir William de Manny. The tombs of
one and all vanished at the Suppression. Taking the
clue from Manny's will we are able to conjecture the design
of his own tomb from a rude woodcut in Dugdale of the
tomb of Sir John Beauchamp, which perished in the fire of
London. That woodcut shows us a recumbent figure on a
table tomb with a canopy above. A few years ago a work-
man repairing the front of the Registrar's House (Long
Gallery of Howard House) towards the entry court, removed
a stone which proved, when its interior surface was seen,
to be a portion of the canopy of Manny's tomb, preserving,
by good fortune, one of the shields with Manny's arms.*
No doubt many like fragments from the monastery were
built by North and Norfolk into the walls of their
mansion.
* The fragment is preserved in Charterhouse Chapel.
20 SIR WALTER DE MANNY
Walter de Manny * was a native of Hainault, fourth of
the five sons of Jean le Borgne de Masny, and of Jeanne de
Jeulain. Masny is now a village some 20 kilometers east
of Douai, lying a little south of Montigny-en-Estrevent,
a station on the line between Douai and Valenciennes.
Jeulain is a village east of the latter town. The Lords of
Masny claimed descent from the Counts of Hainault, and
Walter, as an esquire of Isabella, seems to have come over
with her in 1327, when she arrived to be the bride of
Edward III. From that time forward as the devoted
vassal of his master, he became more English than the
English, and his name stood in the records of his day as
the type of all chivalry and gallantry. It is said, indeed,
that his deeds lost nothing in their recording at the hands
of his fellow-countryman Froissart of Valenciennes, to
whose Iliad he was a very Achilles. " Mon livre est moult
renlumine de ses prouesses," says the old chronicler : and
if even the testimony of two other fellow-countrymen,
Jean le Bel and Jean de Kleerk, be also discounted, there
remains enough behind in the mere list of his enterprises,
and still more in the honour in which he was held by the
King and his fighting Court, to place Manny in the foremost
place among English knights of a knightly age.
Already, in 1331, he had been knighted, and from that
time forward to the end of an unwearied and strenuous life
his days were spent, with few intervals, in the wars of his
master. It is not within the scope of this book to give a
detailed account of a career involving so much history.
The merest record must suffice with here and there some
dwelling on the most notable incidents of a life so
picturesque. We find him in 1332 joined with Edward
Balliol in his attempt upon Scotland, and presently
besieging Berwick.f A little later he was in Wales to hold
* The name appears in many shapes : Maunay, Mauny, Masny,
Mannay, Manney, Manny. The spelling on the French ordinance
map is Masny. I have, as a rule, adhered to the accepted, though
less correct, English spelling. Since the above was written the tide
of war has swept over the lands of Masny.
t It is a coincidence that both Manny and Thomas Sutton should
have earned early distinction as soldiers in different ages at Berwick -
on-Tweed.
SIR WALTER DE MANNY 21
Harlech Castle for the King. It will be remembered that
his unpaid salary for that service appears as a bequest to
the monastery in his will. In 1337 he is Admiral of the
Fleet north of the Thames, and earning fame by the capture
of Cadzand off the mouth of the Scheldt. It is here that
he is accused by one historian* of "Soevitia" in dealing
with the garrison. Other sea ventures followed, but in
1339 we find him ashore in France at the head of forty
lances and sweeping through Brabant and Hainault ; and
so, after a two-years' campaign with Edward, once more at
sea and helping largely by his gallantry to win at Sluys
in June, 1340. The battle, fought still after the manner of
Salamis or Actium, with boarding stages and pikemen, was
of a kind well suited to tell in favour of personal valour, and
had little enough of seamanship about it, but it stands
nevertheless as perhaps the first really important English
naval victory since the days of the Danes. It was, with
his other achievements at sea, doubtless the cause of his
being chosen in 1342 to take a fleet to Hennebont in South
Brittany, where the Countess Jeanne de Montfort was
heroically defending the town against Louis of Spain.
Froissart's description of the arrival, long retarded,
of the English fleet when hope had almost left the garrison —
of the quixotic sortie that very same night made after
supper by Manny and his comrades, with the sequel of
the return to the walls as the morning dawned, and of the
great kissing of all the warriors by the heroic Jeanne, make
up a picture which is but one of many that come to us out
of those romantic pages. Then follows another naval
victory at Quimperle, and a great campaign with much
castle taking and more brave doings. In 1345 he is under
the banner of the Earl of Derby in Gascony, and it is here
that he is once more charged with cruel vengeance on the
garrison of Mirepoix.f Froissart does not record it, but
says that the Earl of Derby treated the inhabitants as was
due from a merciful conqueror. Manny may, indeed, have
sunk on some occasion to the level of the warfare of his
* Adamus Murimuthensis, called Murimuth.
t Chroniques Abregees, Letterhove.
22 SIR WALTER DE MANNY
day — for chivalry to the conquered was by no means the
hall-mark of war in Europe at that day when such men as
Hawkwood and Sir Robert Knolles led their freelances
amongst the villages of Italy and France. But the testi-
mony, in the case of Manny, is but slight at best, and the
charge fits ill with his character. It is pleasanter to turn
to the episode which seems to be historical and by which
Manny's name has come down to us in its best light when
he withstood Edward III — who, like his son the Black
Prince, suffered from occasional moods of savage cruelty —
and bade him remember, as Eustace de St. Pierre and the
other burghers of Calais stood before him awaiting the
death which he decreed, that it would soil his knightly
fame for ever if he put to death defenceless men whom he
had taken prisoners. It is true that Manny is said to have
failed where Queen Isabella presently succeeded. But if
the story be true it is hard to understand how Manny
could have used that argument if he was himself almost
fresh from a similar vengeance at Mirepoix.
Froissart tells a pleasant story of how, after Calais had
been taken by the English under Manny, Edward III and
the Black Prince put themselves under his banner in a night
sortie full of deeds of prowess. And so the wonderful life
goes forward from romance to romance at home and abroad,
with deeds of quixotic personal bravery, and more solid, if
less fascinating, enterprises of national utility. He is found
as fighter, ambassador, governor of a district, in Brittany,
Hainault, Herefordshire. He raises the siege of Berwick in
1355 — six years after his purchase of Newchurch Hawe * —
goes in October, 1359, with Edward to harry France — is
made a Knight of the Garter, and receives that same day
from his friend the Black Prince the pretty present of a
grisell (grey) palfrey. He is still in France, guarding the
captive King John at Calais when the time was drawing
near for Northburgh to make decision concerning the
* The Bull of Clement VI originally granting licence to Manny
to found a college for twelve priests and a chaplain is of the year
1361. This plan was, as we have seen, dropped in favour of a
Carthusian monastery.
MICHAEL DE NORTHBURGH 23
foundation of the monastery — and he appears to have been
in France in 1361 when the Bishop made his will, and had
his interview with the two Carthusian priors. The remain-
ing ten years of his life were still to know no rest. Hither
and thither on this duty or on that for the making of war
or the finishing of peace, he serves his last campaign in
1369 under John of Gaunt in France, comes back to take
charge once more for a year of Merioneth Castle, performs
the sorry task of signing the commission for inquiry into
the reputed cruel deeds of his once comrade in arms, the
Black Prince, and so to his grave in the quiet chapel of
the monks of his foundation, where day by day for endless
years prayers were to be put up for the soul of a very noble
not entirely faultless man.
He married the Lady Margaret Brotherton, the daughter
and heiress of Thomas of Brotherton, fifth son of Edward I.
She was widow of John, Earl of Segrave, and was by her
own right, as heiress of her father, Countess Marshall and
Countess of Norfolk, becoming in her second widowhood
Duchess of Norfolk by creation. There were two children
by this marriage, but the eldest, a son, Thomas, was
drowned at Deptford, while the daughter, the Lady Anne,
born in 1355, married at the age of thirteen, John Hastings,
Earl of Pembroke.
Of Michael de Northburgh we know little till before the
beginning of his life as a cleric, when preferment followed
fast upon preferment. We find him as prebendary in
Lichfield Diocese, of Tachbrook, Wolvey, Longden ; in
Lincoln, of Banbury ; in York, of Bugthorpe, and of
Strensall ; in Salisbury, of Netherbury and of Lyme ; in
St. Paul's, of Mapesbury. He was Archdeacon of Chester
and of Suffolk ; Canon of Hereford — with various other
benefices and appointments held concurrently or con-
secutively. It was not till 1345 that he seems to have
achieved the ambition of so many Churchmen of the day
and found employment at the hands of the King. Edward
sent him as an envoy to Pope Clement VI, concerning the
marriage of the Black Prince with a daughter of the Duke of
24 BISHOP MICHAEL DE NORTHBURGH
Brabant, which, on the ground of relationship, needed
papal dispensation. He seems to have pleased the King,
for next year, 1346, Edward took him with him as coun-
sellor on his French campaign. In 1351 he became
Edward's secretary, and after fulfilling various charges, and
acting as ambassador on important occasions, he was in
1354 made Bishop of London. The remaining seven years
of his life were as before spent largely in foreign embassies
and negotiations. He seems, indeed, to have been the
typical bishop of his day, compelled to share largely in
every secular employment, even, as his will shows, to the
wearing of armour when he followed the King on his
campaigns — a life strangely unlike that to which he set
the seal of his approval when he became the second founder
of the monastery of the silent monks in New Church Hawe.
We have already dealt with his share in the foundation
of our Charterhouse — a great one from the point of view
of inspiration and of influence — a share without which
Manny's project might easily have fallen to the ground in
the press of many absorbing interests. We have spoken
also of his will, of his death of plague at Copford in Essex
in the very year when his project seemed ripe, and of his
burial near the west porch of his own cathedral. It
remains only to say some few words as to the reasons which
impelled Manny and Northburgh, himself a Dominican,
to their choice of the Carthusian order for their foundation.
Apart from the fact that to that order belonged in a
special degree the duties of prayer for the dead, there was
probably to these two men a very special attraction also
in the calm and repose of Carthusian monasteries and in the
saintly and unworldly lives that were lived within them.
These two men, the layman and the Churchman, had known
little of restfulness in their own lives, and they had been
in touch with the world, if sometimes at its best yet most
often at its worst. War and rapine with their forerunners
and their aftermath of diplomacy and intrigue had been
the lot of both. They came perhaps well out of it for
what it was, but if we take the view, as we are entitled to
take it, that all charge of cruelty in the case of Manny must
CHOICE OF AN ORDER 25
be held to be non-proven, yet for him as for Northburgh
the thought of the life behind them must have been scarred
by many a memory of what they had seen when unhappy
France was being laid in ashes in the cause of the Plan-
tagenets. They had had to join hands and share the
results of men such as Knolles, whose track was marked by
the burnt homesteads which obtained the name for their
ruined gables of " Knolles' Mitres." * In the midst of all
this misery, in which their own part was certainly a worthier
one, redeemed by some higher sense of chivalry, they had
met at Paris, at Amiens, at Avignon, and elsewhere in
France, the quiet simplicity of Carthusian life, which must
indeed have seemed like heaven in the midst of hell. Manny
in so many words expressed as part of the purpose of his
foundation that prayers should daily go up thence not for
his own soul alone but for those who had died through him.
And the monk's manuscript so often quoted declares that
Northburgh's choice was due to what he had seen of the
lives of the Carthusians when he sought quiet retreat
amongst them on his way through Paris from the wars.
It remains for the next chapter to give some insight into
the manner of this same Carthusian life in our own or any
other Charterhouse.
* Knolles — " the old Brigand " founded one of the cells of
Charterhouse : see M.S.M.I.
CHAPTER V
ST. BRUNO AND THE CARTHUSIAN ORDER
THE Carthusian order was founded by Bruno of Cologne
in the year 1084. It does not come, one must say once
more, within the scope of this book to attempt a detailed
account of his life. A brief outline must suffice. And,
indeed, the materials for a biography are so few that they
hardly enable us, read we ever so sympathetically between
the lines, to construct a personality from them. It is com-
paratively easy to bring near to ourselves the warm and
human figure of a St. Francis, but the figure of St. Bruno
comes to us more stately and more shadowy through the
added mist of two earlier centuries, with something of that
statuesque silence, the finger on the lips, which Houdon
embodied in the noble figure in Sta Maria degli Angeli in
Rome. Yet no one who has attained to any sympathetic
understanding of the Carthusian order can fail to have
realised that there must have been a something of strange
strength and simple persuasive beauty in the personality
which could stamp its own impress on an Order whose rules,
fitted apparently for so few men, fitted apparently for so
few ages, has yet endured for over eight centuries, and
remains unchanged in all its essentials in a ninth, which is,
in almost every particular, such a contradiction of its
principles. The Carthusian order to-day practises, with
the very slightest modification, the very rule which Bruno
thought out and put in practice in the eleventh century.
It is agreed that Brunon or Bruno was a native of
Cologne, of the noble family of Harde-Faust (Hartenfaust,
or Hardevrist *), and that in due time he went to the
* The name Hardevrist survived till the eighteenth century at Ypres.
26
ST. BRUNO 27
collegiate school of St. Cunibert in that town. Some
writers send him thence to the University of Paris, and
presently record a miracle — made use of by Le Sueur in his
frescoes of the life of the saint for the Carthusian Monastery
of Paris * — whereby Bruno was converted to his very
serious view of life. The story, which will be found in
Mrs. Jameson's legends of the monastic order, describes
how a certain Doctor Raymond Diocr6s, of great repute
for his life and learning, having been brought to Notre
Dame for funeral, rose thrice upon his bier to the horror of
the bystanders, uttering at intervals the sentences, " I am
called," " I am judged," " I am condemned." If, however,
Bruno was really a student at Paris, it needs not to call in
the aid of miracle to explain to us that the condition of
things in that place and age might have well produced
distress of mind and revolt in one who was cast in the mould
of a St. Bruno. We are back in history when we find him
at Rheims, where, as Prebendary and later as Chancellor
he earned a widespread fame for his teaching and his
capacity in affairs, and famous pupils went forth from his
school. Perhaps the foremost of these was Eudes (Otto) de
Chatillon, afterwards Prior of Cluny, and at last Pope, as
Urban II. But the longing to escape from the world, no
matter whence it came, was strong upon him. He
presently resigned his offices, and for a time sought the
cloister of Seche-Fontaine, near Molesme,f diocese of
Langres, a Benedictine House where by direct experience he
learnt the monastic life, and thought out in this light the
rules of his own future order. Presently, his scheme being
matured, he sets forth southwards with six companions,
Landuino di Lucca (second prior of the Grande Chartreuse),
Etienne de Bourg and Etienne de Die (Canons of Saint Ruf,
near Avignon), Hugh the chaplain with Andre and Guerin,
lay brothers. The little band set their faces for the
* The original cartoons are in the Louvre. The legend is told at
fuller length in two shapes in A. Lefebvre's St. Bruno.
f Doubts are, however, expressed on this and other points in
this period of the life. It appears that at about this time Molesme,
which had for its abbot Robert, the subsequent founder of Citeaux
and the Cistercian order, had established a smaller house close by
at Seche-Fontaine. The question is discussed in Lefebvre, op. cit.
28 ST. BRUNO
mountains of Dauphine, to-day the haunt of happy travellers,
but to the mind of that century, the type of all that was
most wild and inhospitable in nature. The cause of the choice
is not far to seek. Bruno's old pupil, Hugues de Chateau-
neuf, known to-day as St. Hugh of Grenoble,* was Bishop of
this latter place. An old legend tells how he had dreamed
that he saw seven stars f fall from heaven on a certain wild
spot in his diocese, and, while he pondered, the coming of
the seven pilgrims made clear the meaning. He takes them
to the spot, which bore the local name of Chartrousse, and
which had and has, even in that land of beauty, few rivals
for its grandeur and wildness. It lies about halfway, as
the crow flies, between Chambery and Grenoble, in the
magnificent Gorge de Guiers des Morts, a deep ravine in the
mountains of Dauphine, which lies a little west of the valley
of the Isere. Here at a point somewhat higher up the glen
than the present monastery these seven searchers after
God built for themselves in June, 1084, their seven wooden
chalets, detached from each other by a space of about five
cubits (" environ cinq coudees "). The only stone building
was the little chapel, said to have stood on the site of the
present oratory of St. Bruno. This little settlement
became the type for all subsequent Carthusian monasteries.
It was swept away — all but the chapel — by an avalanche
in 1132, and for security the new home was placed lower
down where now the glorious but deserted monastery of
La Grande Chartreuse is seen.
Bruno had thus attained his ideal, perfect separation
from the world with perfect communion with his Maker.
But meanwhile another of his old pupils of Rheims, Eudes
(Otto) of Chatillon, had become Cardinal Bishop of Ostia,
and was a strong candidate for the papacy when, on May 25,
1085, Gregory VII died in exile from Rome, and when
* Not, of course, to be confounded with the Carthusian, St. Hugh
of Lincoln, statesman, man of action, cathedral builder, Bishop,
who died in 1200.
t The arms of the Carthusian order became seven stars or a
ground azure. But in 1233 there was added to this by Dom Martin,
Prior of the Grande Chartreuse, General of the order, the now well
known emblem of the orb surmounted by the Cross with the legend
" Stat Crux dum Volvitur orbis."
ST. BRUNO. BY HOUDON.
ST. BRUNO 29
Victor 111, a few months only after he had fought his way
with Matilda's troops to the possession of St. Peters, died
a broken man, Eudes became, at the conclave of Terracina,
on May 12, 1088, Pope under the name of Urban II. This
able man, the first Pope who received consecration outside
of Rome, was destined, like his two predecessors, to fight
his way to the possession of his See. Wibert, Archbishop
of Ravenna, the protege of the Emperor Henry, as anti-
pope under the title of Clement III, alternately backed and
deserted by the fickle populace of Rome, had, since 1080, held
Rome or fled from it as the Armies of Henry or of Matilda,
of Robert Guiscard or of Count Roger, of Cencio Frangipani
or the murderous mob of Rome, dominated in turn the
unhappy city. At this moment, May, 1088, Wibert held it,
all save the Island of the Tiber and the fortress of the
Frangipani beneath the Palatine over against the Arch of
Titus.
It was at this terrible hour that Urban, sometimes living
the life of the refugee on the Island of the Tiber, sometimes
wandering in South Italy in the dominion of Count Roger,
summoned to his side as his counsellor, the man who had
turned his back upon the world. It says much for Urban's
confidence in the wisdom and character of the man, that
he who was himself a past-master in all the arts of diplomacy
should have summoned such an one at such a crisis.
Opinions vary as to the date at which the summons was
sent — some placing it in 1088 and others in 1090.* Which-
ever it be it came at a time which would have appalled
even the most worldly and most hardened. When Bruno
first set eyes on the sacred city its once most populous
quarters, the Aventine, and the Ccelian, lay a blackened heap
of ruins. It was but a few years since Robert Guiscard
with his wild host of Normans and Sicilians, of Saracens and
Calabrians, bringing back Gregory to his own, had laid the
city in blood and ruins, while the great Pope, for this once
a small figure, stood by and suffered it without protest.
The eternal stain on an otherwise great character rested
* The list of Priors of the Grande Chartreuse is in favour of the
later date.
30 ST. BRUNO
not only on his memory. The visible scar, which Bruno
beheld that day, has remained till within this writer's own
lifetime. Forty years ago the Aventine and the Coelian
were still a desolation.
The actual share which Bruno took in the councils of
Urban, before the latter was finally to gain possession of
the Lateran, has been by some writers denned with detail
which is hardly guaranteed by severe history. He is said
to have been an important factor in the Councils held at
Melfi, Troia, Benevento, and elsewhere ; to have been the
dictator of Urban's policy towards the Norman princes : and
to have been active in stirring up adversaries in Germany
against Henry : to have negotiated the unlovely marriage
between the young duke Guelf and the elderly Empress
Matilda, and generally to have been the master-hand who
guided the intricate diplomacies to which Urban had to
resort. It is all very strange if true, but backed by no
contemporary evidence it is incredible. What we may well
believe is that the councils of the Carthusian to his old
pupil were for the mitigation of all that was so deplorable
in the intrigues of the day. But if, indeed, the later date
of 1090 be the true one for the coming of Bruno to the Pope,
then the time that he remained actually at his side was
short. For before the year was out he had asked leave
from Urban to retire once more to solitude, and in 1091 * a
charter from Count Roger granted to him the lonely site of
La Torre in Calabria, where presently arose the second
monastery founded by St. Bruno in his lifetime. Surely
the conclusion is that the man who had left behind his work
at Rheims, because he could not see in it his true mission,
had still less found that mission in the atmosphere of Italian
politics and that he severed himself from that which was
repugnant to his inner self. At the same time the fact that
he was not allowed to return to his beloved Chartreuse seems
to show that Urban desired to keep this saintly counsellor
within reach. That Urban did presently recall him from
time to time is asserted by several writers and may have
* Lefebvre, op. ciL, p. 97.
LA TORRE 31
been the case. But there again the first authorities for the
statement are of a somewhat late date.
The new Certosa— for, by an affectionate transference,
the name of the old home in Dauphine migrated in an
Italian form to the wilderness of Calabria — was certainly
well chosen as a solitude. It lies some twenty miles inland
upon the peninsula of Calabria at the western foot of the
range of Aspromonte. The traveller who to-day traverses,
as best he can, those weary miles of bare and sunbaked
upland is in a good position to judge of what it must have
been eight centuries ago, when all was bare alike and when
no human habitation was seen where now the poor village
of " Serra di San Bruno " stands a mile or so north of the
monastery. It was then a spot to which none but some
lonely charcoal burner or belated huntsman could have
resorted. To-day as the traveller descends from the last
height, and pauses under the cross on the little plot of level
ground where tradition says that Bruno bid farewell to
Landuino after a visit from his old comrade, he sees before
him in the valley an unexpected verdure, some fine oaks
and chestnuts, and some slight wealth of fruit-tree and olive
backed against the dark pines of Aspromonte. This is the
legacy of seven centuries of Carthusian care and culture —
the only civilising force, perhaps, which has been at work in
that forsaken land. The nearest township is the poverty-
stricken Melito, ten miles nearer the coast, where once Count
Roger kept hunting holiday, where he was married to
Eremberga, and where he — dying presently in the same year
as Bruno, 1101 A.D. — was to lie at rest beside her. There is,
indeed, a picturesque tradition that Count Roger before the
granting of the charter had already made acquaintance
with the Saint. The story would have it that Bruno, on
an errand to Calabria from Pope Urban, had found for him-
self his lonely haunt at La Torre, and here one day the great
Norman, while hunting, came across him. The tradition
may be sound : there is nothing against it save a slight
difficulty in time. But, without it, it is also easy to see
that from Urban himself, who had been a wanderer there,
Bruno might have had report of its fitness for his choice.
32 ST. BRUNO
The first settlement in this new home was at the spot
known as La Torre, where the oratory of St. Bruno still
marks the site of " Sta Maria del Bosco." But before long
a second settlement lower down was found necessary, and
here under the name of " San Stefano del Bosco " rose the
great monastery, which with one interval,* endured as a
Certosa till the great earthquake of 1783 shattered the
whole countryside and left it a heap of ruins, the haunt of
the adder and the owl. So it remained till within the last
twenty years. It has now been bought and given once
more to the order with some portion of its old domains,
and it is now rebuilt and inhabited by Carthusian monks.
It was here that, with perhaps an occasional summons to
Rome, Bruno spent the last ten years of his life, and dying
in 1101 was laid to his rest.
From the life of this true saint, for which the historical
materials are all too few, while the added conjectures have
been all too many, we at least are able to realise the figure
of one who was by capacity a man of action, by preference
a man of retirement and self-effacement : a man by native
wisdom, by education, by experience, well-equipped for
affairs, and yet seeing his true mission in another direction :
a man possessed of many of the qualities of a leader of men :
a man above all capable of inspiring other men with his own
ideals, and holding them to those ideals by the bonds of a
rule which, however impossible to the many, was made
possible to the few for whom it was intended by its leavening
of sound sense, and its admixture of human sympathy. He
left behind him the outlines of his rule, not in writing, but
verbally, having, it is said, during the visit to him of
Landuino, who succeeded him as Prior of the Grande
Chartreuse, imparted all his views. Landuino never
reached Dauphine, but dying on the way home in 1100,
left in manuscript the notes which helped the Prior Guigo,
a few years later, to shape the " Consuetudines Ordinis
* It was for a short time abandoned by the Carthusians and
passed to the Cistercians, by whom it was restored to its original
order.
CONSUETUDINES 33
Carthusiensis " which became the accepted text-book for
Carthusian life. They were not printed till 1510. A copy
of this work, from the noble press of John Amerbach of
Bale,* lies before me as I write. The rule of life, simple,
austere, exact down to the smallest details of prayer and
praise, of manners and conduct, of diet and dress, is yet so
tempered with common sense and with a cheerful recogni-
tion of the needs of human life, that it has stood the test of
eight centuries, and now in its ninth it differs very little
save for some slight modifications from that which was
lived on the slopes of Chartrousse, among the pines of
San Stefano del Bosco and in the flats of Smithfield.
* The Consuetudines were re-issued with invaluable comments
by Dom Masson in 1894, and were printed at the monastery of
Montreuil in a manner worthy both of them and of the press from
which they came.
CHAPTER VI
THE CARTHUSIAN RULE AND CARTHUSIAN
MONASTERIES
THE ground plan of our Charterhouse in London, visible
still through all the changes that have befallen it, yields up
its secret only to those who have some knowledge of the
requirements of a Carthusian monastery. Such knowledge
not only throws light on many difficulties, but it serves to
protect us from the many strange mistakes that have been
published with regard to our monastery.
We saw in the last chapter that the little first settlement
at Chartrousse became the type of all subsequent Charter-
houses for all time. The seven little wooden cottages, or
cells, built doubtless like the chalets of the district, with a
covered way or corridor to unite them, became in later
monasteries, the Great Cloister with its cottage cells and
gardens built about an open square and joined by the
" ambulacrum " or covered arcade. The tiny oratory
grew into the monastic Church : the little room where the
community met to discuss its affairs into the Chapterhouse ;
the common room into the Refectory ; the chalet devoted
to the wayfarer or visitor into the Guesthouse. These
main features repeat themselves with such persistency that
the plan of one complete Charterhouse is a fair guide to any
other.
To begin with the Great Cloister, which, as the dwelling-
place of the monks, became of course the heart of a Charter-
house, it may be here said that the number of a normal
monastery was twelve monks in the great cloister and a
Prior. This number is found at the English Charterhouses
of Beauvale, and Axholme and, abroad, of Capri, Avignon,
34
COTTAGE CELL, GREAT CLOISTER. MOUNT GRACE.
CELL DOOR AND HATCH, GREAT CLOISTER. MOUNT GRACE.
35
Pontignano, and many others, and was the total of the
Grande Chartreuse in Guigo's day. A double monastery
housed twenty-four monks in the Great Cloister with a
Prior. This number is found in our London Charterhouse,
and in many abroad such as the Certosas of Pavia, Rome
(Sta Maria degli Angeli in the Baths of Diocletian), the
Cartuja of Miraflores, near Burgos, and many more, while
the Grande Chartreuse in its later day, the Charterhouse of
Sheen, near Richmond (the largest English Charterhouse),
and one or two more, held thirty-six cloister cells. The
Certosa of Farneta, near Lucca, which has become the
Mother House since the dissolution of the Grande Chartreuse,
holds nearly double that number, and so also the modern
English Charterhouse of Parkminster.
The word " cell " is to those who know the cells of other
orders misleading. The cell of a Carthusian is a detached
house or cottage placed in its own little garden plot. Both
the cottage and the plot vary in size in various instances.
The chalets of the first settlement at Chartrousse are said
to have stood with a mere interval of 7 or 8 feet. I have
measured many cells and plots in many Charterhouses in
Europe and have found the plots to vary from some 30 feet
square (as at Avignon, Miraflores, etc.) up to nearly 60 feet
at Ferrara, whose cells and gardens are the roomiest that
I have seen. But in the greater number of instances the
plots approximate to 50 feet square. The distance from
hatch to hatch in the frontage of the three cells still visible
in our London Charterhouse is about 50 feet. The cells
were either of one storey as at Capri, Avignon, Xeres, etc.,
or of two storeys,* which was indeed the most usual plan,
as at Mount Grace in Yorkshire, Sta Maria degli Angeli in
Rome, Padula in Apulia and elsewhere. Our own Charter-
house cells, to judge by the plan of the water supply, were of
two storeys. In rare instances, as at Trisulti in the Abruzzi
(where, however, an alteration of level has taken place), the
cell has also a basement. But in all cases the accommoda-
tion is the same, differing merely in size and extent. On the
* Perhaps the truer description in most cases would be to say a
ground floor and a loft.
36 THE CARTHUSIAN RULE
door, which none may pass save the owner of the cell, or the
Prior, or one who has the Prior's permission, is found a
letter of the alphabet, and under it a text of scripture,
or from one of the fathers, beginning with the corre-
sponding letter. Thus, in our plan we find every cell
indicated under its proper letter, and the M.S.M.I. speaks
of a certain cell where the verses are written which begin
with the letter Y ; again of one whose verses begin with I.
At one side of the door is a little hatch passing, with an
elbow bend, through the thickness of the wall. It is through
this hatch that the food is passed to the monk by the lay
brother, who must neither see nor speak to the occupant.
Two such hatches may be traced in the fragment that
remains of our Great Cloister. The cottage is entered,
usually, by a passage which gives access to a little work-
room, where will be found the tools of the particular handi-
craft which the monk uses for his recreation. Here we
meet at once the common sense which helps to make
possible the strain of the isolation and solitude. For every
monk must have a handicraft of his choice. Before the
days of printing the chief industry of the Carthusian lay in
the transcribing of books. This is especially * stated
by Guigo, and a most exact inventory of the tools which
each monk was to possess for the purpose is given. And we
find the fact emphasised in early writers. But after the
fifteenth century the spread of printing j supplanted the
* Guibert, Abbe" de Nogent, describes bis visit about 1104 to the
Grande Chartreuse. He tells how the Comte de Nevers in kindness of
heart sent the monks presents of silver articles, and how they refused
the costly gifts with gratitude, but asked for a supply of parchments.
" The transcription of books," he adds, " was one of the occupations
by predilection, of these holy anchorites." Pierre de Cluny, too,
writes, " Ils s'appliquent au silence dans leur cellule . . . ou au
travail des mains, surtout a copier des manuscrits."
t The share of the Carthusians, however, in the printing of early
books and in the spread of letters was not inconsiderable. Apart
from the fine libraries which they collected, as at the Karthaus of
Buxheim, with which the printer, Gunther Zainer, seems to have
had close connection, a list of books printed in Carthusian monas-
teries has been published by Dr. G. C. Williamson. It does not follow,
of course, that the work was all done by Carthusian hands, though
the presses were set up in their monasteries and doubtless supervised
by them. The fine printing done quite recently by the now sup-
pressed chartreuse of Montreuil-sur-Mer may also be mentioned.
THE CARTHUSIAN RULE 37
old art, and it may be said that carpentry,* gardening, book-
binding, and other crafts have taken its place in Carthusian
recreation. The cottage contains also a small prayer-
chamber or oratory, a sleeping room, a living room, a wood-
store. One of the rooms opens to a little outside penthouse
or promenade which commonly runs the length of the
garden, and serves for the exercise of the monk. For the
idea that he perambulates the cloister at will is false. He
uses the cloister arcade only as a passage to and from the
church, or the Refectory ; for the occasional visit to the
barber's shop (Rasura), and for the way out to his " spatia-
mentum " or weekly walk outside the monastery wall, the
latter being the only occasion on which free speech is allowed
him, except after Refectory on Sundays and feast days.
The little 50-foot garden, sometimes beautifully kept, if
gardening be his pleasure, is for the monk alone.
The Church in all cases either abuts on the Great
Cloister or is so near it that access is obtained by the monks
without traversing other portions of the monastery. It was
in all the early monasteries, and, indeed, it may be said, in
all north of the Alps and the Pyrenees was of a very simple
even severe character as befitted an order whose key-note
is " Simplicitas." The normal Carthusian Church is a
simple choir, without nave or aisles. Where the lay
brothers worship in the same church, as happens in most
cases, a screen divides the portion nearest the high altar,
which is used by the choir monks only, from the other end
of the Church, which is used by the lay brothers. The
choir monks enter by a door within their precinct, the lay
brothers entering from the other end. The screen, usually
some 10 feet in height, has a door in the middle enabling the
lay brothers to see the high altar, and upon their side of
the screen, on either side of the door, are found a pair of
altars, dedicated sometimes to St. John and St. Joseph, to
St. Bruno or other saint. Strangers, save by some special
exception, were not admitted to the monks' portion of the
Church, which was reserved for themselves, for visitors of
* The certosina work common in North Italy is so-called from its
having originated in Carthusian cells.
38 THE CARTHUSIAN RULE
their order, Bishops, and ecclesiastics. Usually, therefore,
there was a place reserved elsewhere for strangers. This
was sometimes on the floor in rear of the lay brothers'
portion (as at Evora, Xeres, Seville), but more often in a
gallery above, as at the Grande Chartreuse, at the modern
San Stefano del Bosco (the latter built by French monks
on the model of the former). The bell was swung in such a
position that each monk as he passed in from the great
cloister could ring it till his place was taken by the next
comer. There was no organ, Carthusian services being
wholly in chanted plain-song. Excess of ornament,*
stained glass, embellishment of choir books were dis-
couraged as unfitting in the stern and simple worship of
the Carthusian order.
In seeking for the features of a Carthusian Church
in our own Chapel in London, on which later ages
have piled, though reverently, so many obliterating
details, it is very interesting to be able to unearth the
simple plan of the church — now represented by the
southern bay or aisle — in which the white monks worshipped.
The door by which the choir monks entered has disappeared,
but the lay brothers' entry may be seen in the external
southern wall (at about the point of the Preacher's seat),
and the dividing screen must have been placed just east
of it. The position of the strangers' portion is uncertain.
Some find it in the little vaulted chamber, now the Baptistry
at the west. I am myself inclined to believe that it was
a gallery in the chamber above, now the Muniment Room,
which in those days may have been open to the Church.
The monks' Refectory, Freytor, or Frater, was also
generally accessible by easy means from the great cloister,
and naturally adjoined the kitchen. It was used only
* It was and is something of a complaint against the Italian and
Spanish Charterhouses, especially those which came into existence
in the days of the Renaissance, that the splendour of their churches
and their buildings, as at the Certosa of Pavia, of Naples, of Ferrara, of
Miraflores, of Borne, contradicted the Carthusian spirit of simplicity.
It is only just to remember that in each of these cases the monastery
was somewhat at the mercy of its splendour-loving founder ; and
still more that, whatever the magnificence of the church or of the
building, the life of the monk in the cell partook not of it but remained
as austere as in the sterner convents of the north.
THE CARTHUSIAN RULE 39
on Sundays or on feast days, on which days alone the
monks fed in common, yet still in silence, while chapters
of the Bible were read aloud from a pulpit fixed upon the
Refectory wall. In Charterhouses still occupied I have
always found that the tables are ranged against the side
walls, the Prior occupying the central position at a cross
table at the end. The monks sit at one side of the table
only, their backs to the wall. In monasteries where the
lay brothers occupy an entirely different house, " Domus
inferior " or " Correria " (as at the Grande Chartreuse,
where it was situated at La Courrerie, a little distance off),
and at Witham in Somersetshire, the lay brothers dined in
their own house. But this separation of houses applies
only to a small minority. Where the lay brothers' quarters
were adjacent to the rest, as in London, they usually, not
invariably, had their Refectory in the same room as the
monks, but separated from them by a partition. They
never took their meals in common. The question of our
own Refectories in London will be, however, dealt with in a
later chapter.
The Chapterhouse, which in the London House was
to the east of the church, served as a place of meeting for the
Fathers and the Prior. Here took place the voting on the
election of a new Prior, or the admission to full vows of a
new monk. Here, too, addresses were given by the Prior,
for sermons were not delivered in a Carthusian Church.
The Sacristy is marked in the plan as lying on the north
side of the church, with which there was communication.
In every Charterhouse there was also a little cloister,
" Parvum Claustrum," never far away from the Great
Cloister. It was usually surrounded by buildings, and in all
the monasteries which I have examined — some sixty in
number — it had an arcade around it. This arcade either
carried a storey above it (as in Rome, Florence, etc.), or
was projected under a penthouse roof into the area of the
cloister. And no doubt one of these methods was adopted
in our own Little Cloister, whose position approximately
corresponds to the present " Master's Court." In our
Charterhouse the Guesthouses seem to have been on the
40 THE CARTHUSIAN RULE
east wing of this cloister (now the Master's Lodge), and,
therefore, as in most other * instances, it was very near the
Gatehouse. The west wing of the Little Cloister (now the
Registrar's House and part of the kitchen) were the quarters
of the lay brothers, of which a portion still survives in the
buildings around " Washhouse Court." Here were the
" obediences " of the lay brothers — the offices, that is,
in which their service was rendered. There was a wash-
house (now in the lower portion of the Registrar's House),
a long workroom along the west side (still serving its purpose
to-day, but divided by partitions), a bakehouse, a brew-
house (for the monastery, of course, brewed its own small
beer), and a fishhouse. The north-east corner of this little
court contained the kitchen and the larder. The lay
brothers' quarters were once of much greater extent than
as we see them now, and beyond them lay the stables,
barns and outhouses (occupying the site of the present
brothers' buildings in Preachers' Court and Pensioners'
Court). The monastery fishpond,f which yielded so many
" great carps " to the seekers after unconsidered trifles at
the dissolution, lay further north across the space where the
north wing of Pensioners' Court now stands. The barber's
shop was, in the early monastery, placed in the Great
Cloister a little east of the Chapterhouse, but was probably
moved at the remodelling of the monastery in Tynbygh's
priorate to the neighbourhood of the lay brothers' quarters.
The Gatehouse, a very important feature of any monastery,
occupied the position of the present Gatehouse, and the
entrance court within represents the space often found in
Charterhouses intervening between the Porter's Lodge and
the actual conventional buildings.
In the plan of the water supply, so often quoted, we
find outside the Gatehouse and in the western portion of the
space which is now Charterhouse Square, a building marked
as " Egypte or the Fleshe Kitchen." This building has
caused much questioning. But the explanation is perhaps
not far to seek. It will presently be shown that the Donati
* At Beau vale the Guesthouse adjoins the Gatehouse, and so,
too. at Mount Grace.
t See Record Office, William Dayle's report.
THE CARTHUSIAN RULE 41
or servants of the monastery (not the Conversi or lay
brothers) who were under no vows and merely attached
to the convent by a civil, or perhaps we had better say, a
religious contract, were allowed to eat meat. And since
this could not be used nor admitted in any shape inside
the gates, it was to be procured by the Donati — perhaps
also by the servants and retainers of those who came to
visit the monastery — in this outside fleshe kitchen, just as
at the Grande Chartreuse a place of refreshment was allowed
outside the gates.
To the north of the buildings, beyond the Great Cloister
and the monastery barns, lay the kitchen garden * and
orchard, and the monk's wilderness or wild garden. These
lay, the former where now is found " The Master's Garden,"
the latter (though the boundaries are undefined) more to
the east where " Under Green," the cricket ground of the
Under School, lay in the days of the school.f
So far for the arrangements of the monastery, which
repeat themselves with but slight variation as to size and
position in every Charterhouse. And now for the life that
is lived within it.
The members of a Charterhouse are of three grades :
first, the Professed, or Cloistered, or Choir Monks — the
Fathers as they are sometimes called, who are under the
fullest and strictest vows taken after a long probation or
novitiate, who never leave the cloister but by leave of the
Prior ; secondly, the Conversi or Lay Brothers, also under
vows equally strict on some points, but less so upon others,
and who are allowed to go outside the Convent without
the Prior's leave ; and thirdly, the Donati, who are the
servants and labourers of the Convent, under no vows, but
under an ordinary contract.
The future monk is not admitted to novitiate before the
age of eighteen, and the greatest pains are used to prevent
* The hay and the apples, the rosemary and the rose trees, and
the bays which were amongst the minor spoils of the monastery in
1537-9 will occur to the mind of the reader.
t The space known as "Under Green " is now entirely built over.
The road lately re-christened as Clerkenwell Road still bore in the
writer's schooldays the name of Wilderness Row. Thackeray's
first schoolhouse, No. 28, still exists there.
42 THE CARTHUSIAN RULE
any one who is unfitted by temperament or even by
physique for the severities and special calls of the Rule.
The postulant must be able to chant since the prayers of
the Church are so great a portion of his duty, and he must
have some education and know some Latin for the same
reasons, and at the outset he is of intention submitted to a
month of severest austerity, and the statutes enjoin that
he shall be even discouraged and that the trials of the life
shall be set before him in clearest shape. At the end of a
month, if he be suitable, he is, at a meeting in the Chapter-
house, admitted to Probation, and wears the white habit *
during his novitiate, and lives in all respects the life of the
monk. After one year of novitiate he is, again by voice of
the Chapter, admitted to the " simple vows " ; and not
till four years of proved fitness have followed does he
finally take upon him, by consent of the Chapter, the
" Solemn vows " which make him irrevocably a Carthusian.
Before this time he has been free to retire from the pro-
bation. These are the precautions taken by the order to
prevent any but those few for whom the profession is
possible and fitting, from entering rashly on the vows. It
may be doubted, says a writer, if in the ordinary pro-
fessions of life men often have such opportunity of insight
into the life that they are choosing, or such means of
judging of their fitness for it.
The ordinary day of a Carthusian monk in summer is
divided as follows : —
5.45 a.m. The bell of his cell is rung from outside by
the monk [Excitator], who wakes the cloister. The monk
rises and says the first office in his cell.
6.30 a.m. The second Angelus sounds. [At the sound
of each Angelus — there are four in the day — the monk says
three Ave Marias.]
6.45 a.m. The monk leaves his cell and goes to the
church, where he takes his place in his stall, and kneels in
silent prayer.
* The habit differs only from that of the full monk by the absence
of the characteristic fillets or bands at the side of the long hood. But
the novice wears over it a black cape.
THE CARTHUSIAN RULE 43
7 a.m. The Conventual High Mass.
7.45 a.m. (about). Each monk (every monk is an
ordained priest) celebrates his private Mass in one of the
many chapels. [This custom does not seem to have
belonged to the earliest days of the order, but had become
the rule by the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. It
explains the large number of chapels which are found in
some Charterhouses, since it was necessary for each monk
to celebrate his Mass at about the same time. In London
we know of chapels * in honour of St. Anne, 1405 (at the
west end of the church, south side, see Chapter VIII.), the
Holy Trinity, St. Peter, St. Paul (a small chapel on the
south side of the Chapterhouse), St. Mary Magdalene,
1436 (apparently opening out of the Little Cloister, St.
John the Evangelist, 1437 (south side of the high altar).
St. Katharine, endowed by Sir Robert Rede, founder of
the Rede Lectureships hi 1520 (apparently on the south
side), St. Agnes (on the north side, founded 1475 on the
site of the earlier parlour), St. Michael and St. John Baptist
(north side), 1453, and a little to the east of this, St. Jerome
and St. Bernard, 1453.] For this purpose the monks
were divided in pairs, one monk celebrating while his
companion served. The order was then reversed.
8.45 or 9 a.m. He returns to his cell and has one free
hour. He uses half of this for meditation, half for recrea-
tion (manual labour).
10 a.m. Office of Sext in cell. Two lay brothers bring
the meal of the day, " the pittance," to the hatch, and
place the food in the little elbow-shaped aperture, whence
it is removed in silence by the monk.
10 a.m. to 12 noon. The meal is followed by free time,
in which the monk may occupy himself in manual labour,
gardening, or reading.
12 noon. The third Angelus sounds : office of Nones of
the Blessed Virgin, and office of the day in the cell. Free
time till Vespers.
* The list of chapels given in M.S.M.I. differs in very slight par-
ticulars from that which is found in the inventory at the surrender.
See Appendix.
44 THE CARTHUSIAN RULE
2.30 p.m. Vespers of Little office in cell.
2.45 p.m. The monk leaves his cell and goes to the
church.
3.0 p.m. Vespers in church followed by the office of the
dead [the latter is not used on Sundays and Feast Days].
3.45 or 4 p.m. Returns to cell.
4.30 p.m. Supper [except during the long Carthusian
fast from Sept. 14 to Ash Wednesday, when the supper
is practically absent, or consists of fragments saved by
permission from the early meal. During Lent, the fast
of the Church, the second meal is also very meagre].
6.0 p.m. The fourth Angelus, Compline, and office " de
Beata Virgine " in the cell.
After this the monk retires to rest, very early, for he is
again aroused at 10.45 p.m. by the Excitator. The monk
recites the Matins and Lauds of the Virgin and prayers for
the deliverance of the Holy Land (prescribed by the Lateran
Council of 1215).
11.45 p.m. The monk leaves his cell for the third time
during the twenty-four hours, and, lantern in hand, goes to
the church, where at 12 midnight the Matins of the Great
office are begun. These are followed by the Lauds of the
office of the Dead, then the Canonical Lauds and, lastly, the
Ave Marias of the first Angelus at the end of the service,
about 2 a.m. or 2.15 a.m., when the monk returns to his
cell, having completed the round of one single day.
In winter the chief meal is taken at 11 a.m. instead of
10 a.m. On Sundays and Chapter-feast-days all the offices
save Complines are read in the church, and on these days
also the monks take their chief meal together in the
Refectory, during which time silence is kept, and a monk
reads chapters from the Bible.
The monk lives in silence, which is only broken when he
chants in church, and on the one day in the week, when
after the morning meal a walk of some three hours is allowed
outside the monastery. Also on Sundays after the meal
before Vespers. Again when the Prior or Vicar visits him
in his cell or summons him to the Parlour (Locutorium).
The rest is silence. If a monk meets another or a visitor
THE CARTHUSIAN RULE 45
in the cloister he pulls his cowl lower over his face, and
bowing his head passes without speech.
The monk owns no property. Everything that he has
belongs to the monastery, even to the staff on which he
walks, if feeble. He may accept no gift. He may not
enter on any enterprise — may not, for example, write a
book without permission. His life is total surrender.
When he enters the cloister he leaves behind his very name
and is known " in Religion " by a new name.
The Lay Brothers or Fratres Conversi, like the monks,
serve a severe novitiate of a year, but cannot take their
solemn final vows till eleven years have passed. The Nova
Statuta of the Grande Chartreuse, at a time when there
were eleven monks in the Great Cloister, limited the number
of Conversi to sixteen, and this was probably the number
in our Charterhouse. They lived under the same rules of
abstinence and of general life, but were not housed in the
Great Cloister. Each lay brother had his own cell or room —
not a cottage in a garden, like the monk — in another part
of the monastery. In some of the earlier houses, as at
the Grande Chartreuse, the lay brothers lived in a separate
house, called Aula Inferior, or sometimes Correria, after
La Courrerie, at some distance away, and in that case they
had their own refectory (as indeed they sometimes did when
they were housed within the monastery) and chapel, and
the Procurator acted as their Chaplain and Confessor.
Their duties calling them often to occupations outside the
walls, they were allowed to go without special permission
from the Prior. In the British Museum is a MS. of rules
for the lay brothers of Shene. It is, however, in the main
merely an English translation of the orders of Guigo. The
directions are most minute and often very curious. The
Kitchener — a very important brother, who is also in charge
of the gate— is to avoid waste, and if guilty of it to make
confession prostrate. The Shoemaker greases the shoes of
the monks, but is on no account to grease those of the
Conversi. The Master Shepherd is enjoined to avoid all
oaths, lies, and frauds which are wont to attend such
business. Also the shepherds are to keep silence when
E
46 THE CARTHUSIAN RULE
milking. The duties of the Baker, Carpenter, Smith,
Gardener, Barber, are also set forth, and few contingencies
of their crafts seem to have been unprovided for. There is a
shrewdness running through the directions which makes
them very interesting reading.
The Donati were, as already explained, the labourers
and workmen attached to the monastery, not under vows,
and allowed to eat flesh and to go about their business
outside, though under the orders, of course, of the foreman
Brother of their special department and of the Procurator.
The grades of Redditi and Prebendarii, which seem to have
been subdivisions of the Conversi, slightly beneath them,
have long ceased to be reckoned in the order.
The Carthusian diet is absolutely without flesh. Even
for visitors it is not allowed within the convent. Nor in
the case of sickness is any exception made. Eggs, fish,
fruit, bread, vegetables, with milk and cheese, with wine,
if it be a wine country, and with beer, if it be not, is all
that is allowed at their two daily meals. And no rule is
stricter than that which forbids flesh meat. A breach of it
means expulsion from the order. The Carthusian uses
neither tea nor coffee nor tobacco. And yet on this diet
alike for Monks and Conversi the evidence all down the
centuries is ample that health and long life results. The
world outside might wisely take a lesson of health from the
fact. When in the fourteenth century Urban V, who
troubled himself not a little about Carthusian severities,
sought to abolish the restriction against flesh, the Carthu-
sians, failing in other arguments, sent a deputation of
twenty-five hale old men whose ages ranged from eighty
years to near upon a hundred. The argument prevailed.
No woman was allowed within a Charterhouse. Guigo
quaintly gives reason for this regulation. He explains
that since none of the human race, wise men, philosophers,
prophets, judges, not Solomon, David, Samson, Lot, nor
any that have taken themselves wives of their choice —
Adam, too, may come into our mind, says he — " and since
no man can take fire into his bosom without being burnt,
47
nor touch pitch without being defiled, therefore we on no
account allow women to enter our borders so far as in us
lies." In 1483, when Isabel the Catholic made her second
visit to Burgos, before entering the town she turned aside
to the Cartuja of Miraflores, where its founder, her father,
Juan II, had been buried in the choir twenty-nine years
before. But though Miraflores owed its existence to her
father and its continuance and prosperity to herself the
Prior met her outside and refused her entrance. Then he
caused the coffin to be brought forth, and in the square
outside, the poor remains of mortality were, in true Spanish
fashion, laid open to the view of the Queen.
At an earlier date, in 1417, the more concessive Prior
of Portes, near Lyon, had allowed Isabel of Bavaria, Queen
of France, wife of Charles VI, to enter his convent and to
eat a meal there, for which breach of rule he was deposed
from his office and made to do five or six days of abstinence
on bread and water.* In later times it has been enacted by
the General Chapter (which meets at the Mother-House)
that the family of the reigning sovereign of the land may
enter with letters from the Pope. This does not apply to
the admission of the sovereign of any other land — (as, for
example, Queen Victoria at the Grande Chartreuse) —
which needs a special dispensation. The very strange
exception during the early years of the London House will
be explained in the next chapter.
The dress of the Carthusians was, at the time of its
origin, merely adapted from the ordinary dress in which the
shepherd and woodman of the mountains of Dauphine went
about their work. The monk wears a hair shirt with a
second coarse shirt over it, and stockings of thick white
homespun and leather shoes. He wears also a long tunic
* An interesting case was that of Isabella d'Este, wife of Gian
Francesco, Duke of Mantua, who, visiting her sister Beatrice, wife of
Lodovico Sforza, at Milan, made the Certosa of Pavia one of the
stages of her journey. The monks, much against their will, were made
by Lodovico to entertain them. By what, means that gay assemblage
of courtiers and ladies was housed and fed without breach of rule is
not known to the writer. The poor monks afterwards complained
that they had been eaten out of house and home and compensation
was made.
48 THE CARTHUSIAN RULE
of strong white stuff down to the feet. It has broad sleeves
with deep cuffs, and is fastened round the waist with a
white leather belt. The upper garment (the cucullus) is
a double chasuble-shaped cape of white stuff open at each
side, but joined at the bottom by a fillet or band — a very
distinctive feature in Carthusian dress. The upper part
of this garment is a hood which can be drawn over the head
at need. When the monk has to go away from his convent
he wears a black mantle over his habit and a black priest's
broad-brimmed hat. No linen garment is worn either by
monk or lay brother.
The Lay Brothers or Conversi wear almost the same
dress as the monks in church, but without the bands, and
their upper mantle when they go abroad is of brown stuff
instead of black.
The Donati or monastery servants wear an upper coat
or tunic with a hood of dark brown or chestnut, girt at the
waist and worn short to the knee, for practical use in labour.
It is merely a useful labourer's dress distinctive enough to
mark their special calling.
The monks are shaven both face and head, save for a
narrow circle of hair about the crown. The lay brothers
shave the head but wear the beard. The Donati are
not shaved, but are expected to wear their hair close
cut.
The officers of a normal convent are as follows : —
1. A Prior, who is elected by the Convent Chapter four
days after the death of his predecessor — and generally,
though not necessarily, from the monks of the same cloister.
His habit and his life differ in no respect from that of any
other monk, except that he does not generally live in a cell
of the Great Cloister itself, but has a lodging outside of it.
He is " Prior inter pares," and once when Urban V pressed
the order to allow their convents to be ruled by Abbots and
Mitred Abbots they firmly and wisely refused a privilege
which would have inevitably drawn the order into outer
and political life.
2. The Vicar, who ranks next to the Prior, and exercises
the functions of the latter in his absence, or if he be sick,
A LAY BROTHER (CONVERSUS), MIRAFLORES.
A WORKER (DONATUS), MIRAFLORES.
THE CARTHUSIAN RULE 49
or in the interval following a Prior's death. The office is,
however, not used in all Charterhouses.
3. The Procurator or Proctor, who is the Steward or
Bursar of the monastery and has entire control, subject to
the Prior, over all the property and revenues of the convent.
He supervises the work of the lay brothers and Donati
and is their chaplain, living in the Lower House or Correria
with them if there be one. If not he generally lives for
convenience outside of the Great Cloister. At the present
Mother House at Farneta, where there is much business,
there are two procurators.
4. The Novice Master, a monk appointed for the train-
ing of the novices if there are any.
5. The Sacristan, a monk who has charge of the church
and chapels, vestments and vessels. His cell generally
adjoins the church.
Before closing this chapter it is right to pause a moment
and ask what was and is the point of view of the Carthusian
with regard to the cloistered life. It can be no part of such
a book as this either to approve or to condemn the principle
of it. But it is right to try to realise the position which
they seem to hold, which perhaps may be stated thus.
Holding, as they do, with other Christians, that prayer is a
mighty engine for the good of mankind, to which no other
force is comparable, they go forward to the view that prayer
to be most efficacious should be offered so far as possible by
men in nearest communion with God — the effectual fervent
prayer which avails much being that of a righteous man.
And this communion — here we come to their real standing
ground — can only be secured in their opinion by those who
separate themselves from the cares, pleasures, distractions
of the world by living a life of isolation in close commune
with God. They do not assert that such a life is possible
to all men, or to most men, hardly even to many men, but
for the selected few whose vocation it is. For these it is
the sacred way of benefiting their fellows, living and dead,
by the force of prayer continually offered day and night
by men who have denied themselves everything but that.
50 THE CARTHUSIAN RULE
It remains only to say that, however impossible to many
temperaments the life may seem, the evidence is incontest-
able that with the care which is exercised in admission to
the order, the Carthusian monk is very happy in his cloister.
And it may be claimed as a mere matter of history, that
no order has been truer to its purpose and more faithful to
its vows. The old saying about it, " Nunquam re-formata
quia nunquam deformata," has passed into a platitude.
It has throughout the 800 years of its existence been free
from scandal and without reproach. And more than this.
Though it might seem that a body of men separated from
outside human company within a cloister could be little
useful to the secular interests of a neighbourhood, yet
it is a fact that wherever a Charterhouse has been estab-
lished— and, as we have seen, they have mostly sought
the waste places of earth — they have, by their wise manage-
ment and broadminded benevolence, brought blessings and
prosperity to the outside population.* Certainly it has
been no spirit of idleness or uselessness, no spirit of sloth or
incapacity for the work of life, that has spread itself forth
from these homes of silence and of solitude.
CARTHUSIAN FOUNDATIONS IN GREAT BRITAIN.
1178-81. 1. Witham, near Selwood Forest, Somerset.
Founder, Henry II (in expiation of the murder of
Thomas a Becket). For twelve monks and a
Prior. Dedication to the Blessed Virgin and St.
John Baptist. Revenuesat dissolution, £215 15s.
p.a. Present use : the Lay Brothers' church
is the Parish Church. Some buildings of the
monastery remain.
Before 1250. IB. A Cell of Witham at Mendeep, i.e. on the
Mendip Hills, Somerset, near Cheddar Cliffs.
* The Grande Chartreuse itself may be quoted. It founded
schools, built churches, bridges, hospitals, made roads, encouraged
the industries — chiefly foundries — of the district, and on the testi-
mony of an extreme radical in the French Chamber, brought
nothing but advantage to what had been once the wildest district
of Dauphine.
ENGLISH CHARTERHOUSES 51
Now called Charterhouse, Cheddar, and by a
deed of Henry III, in 1250, called The New
Chartreuse of Mendeep. Now a farmhouse.
1127-32. 2. Hinton, Somerset, " Locus Dei." Foundress,
Ela Countess of Salisbury, by charter of 1227,
but the original foundation had been made in
1222 at Hethrop (Heatherop or Hatherop), in
Gloucestershire, by her husband, William
Longespee (buried in Salisbury Cathedral),
natural son of Henry II. For twelve monks
and a Prior. Dedication to the Blessed Virgin,
St. John Baptist and all Saints. Revenues at
dissolution, £262 13s. Present use : a private
dwelling. There are considerable remains of
the monastery.
1280 ? 3. A Charterhouse in Ireland. Place, founder, and
dedication unknown. Suppressed in 1321 by
the General Chapter of the Grande Chartreuse.
1343. 4. Beauvale, Beaver, Beggarlee, near Gresley,
Nottinghamshire. " Pulchra Vallis." Founder,
Sir Nicholas de Cantelupe (Cantlow), buried in
the retro-choir, Lincoln Cathedral. For twelve
monks and a Prior. Dedication to St. Nicholas.
Revenues at dissolution, £227 85. Present use :
a farmhouse attached to a private dwelling.
Large and interesting remains of the monastic
buildings.
1371. 5. Charterhouse, near Smithfield, London. " The
House of the Salutation of the Mother of God,
near London." Founder, Sir Walter de Manny.
For twenty-four monks and a Prior. Dedica-
tion to the Blessed Virgin of the Annunciation.
Revenues at dissolution, £642 4s. 6d. Present
use : Sutton's Hospital.
1378. 6. Charterhouse, Kingston-upon-Hull, sometimes
known even in pre-reformation days as
" Charterhouse Hospital." Founder, Michael
de la Pole, in conjunction with a Hospital for
thirteen poor men and thirteen poor women
52 THE CARTHUSIAN RULE
and a master. Dedication to the Blessed
Virgin, St. Michael and all saints. Revenues
at dissolution, £174 18s. 3d. Present use : a
hostel for old men and old women with a master.
1381. 7. St. Anne's, Shortleyfield, Coventry. Founder,
William Lord Zouche, of Haryngworth. First
stone laid by Richard II (who desired to be
considered its founder). For twelve monks and
a Prior. Dedication to St. Anne. Revenues at
dissolution, £201 7s. 6%d. Present use : a
dwelling-house.
1383 ? 7B. Totnes, Devon. A small house of Benedictine
monks was changed by William de la Zouche
(see above) into a Carthusian Priory, but
restored to the Benedictines in 1386.
1397. 8. Axholme, Lincolnshire, at Lower Melwood, near
Epworth. "The Priory in the Wood."
Founder, Thomas Mowbray Earl of Mowbray
(afterwards Duke of Norfolk and Earl Marshal
in right of his mother). Known to the General
Chapter as " the Charterhouse of Axholme."
Intended for thirty monks and a Prior, but
probably never exceeded twelve monks and a
Prior. Dedication to the Visitation of the
Blessed Virgin, St. John the Evangelist, St.
Edward, King and Confessor. Revenues at
dissolution, £237 15s. 2f d. Present use : a farm.
Small remaining portions of the monastery.
1397 ? 9. Mount Grace, in the parish of East Harsley,
near Osmotherly and Northallerton, Yorkshire.
Founder, Thomas Holand Duke of Surrey by
license of Richard II. Cells for fourteen monks
and a Prior. Dedication, originally to the
Blessed Virgin and St. Nicholas, but afterwards
to " The Assumption of the most Blessed
Virgin." Revenues at dissolution, £382 5s. 11 \d.
Present use : a dwelling-house. Very large and
interesting remains of the monastery. The best
in England.
ENGLISH CHARTERHOUSES 53
1414. 10. Shene, Richmond, Surrey. Founder, Henry V.
Cells in Great Cloister for thirty monks and a
Prior. Dedication to Jesus of Bethlehem.
Revenues at dissolution, £800 5s. 4|d. In
1557 (Jan.) the monks were replaced by Queen
Mary with Maurice Chauncy as Prior, but went
into exile on the succession of Queen Elizabeth.
Present use: the buildings of the monastery
have wholly disappeared. The name survived
in ** Charterhouse Coppice " till within a
recent period.
1429. 11. Perth. " Charterhouse of the Vale of Virtues."
Founder, James I * of Scotland, the Poet Bang.
Number of cells unknown. Destroyed by the
mob in the days of John Knox, 1559. Present
use, James VI's Hospital or Hostel, let in
tenements to the aged poor.
Note. — The numbers quoted in this list give merely the
number of cells for choir monks in the Great Cloister ; but
in many cases the number of monks accommodated was
larger, as at Shene.
* James I was buried in the Charterhouse, but the statement
(embodied in Rossetti's poem, " The King's Tragedy ") that his
murder in 1437 took place there is incorrect. He and his court were
at the Blackfriars Monastery, where he was murdered by Sir Robert
Graham and his fellows.
CHAPTER VII
THE STORY OF OUR MONASTERY FROM 1371
WE may now return to the internal history of the House,
which we left at the point when, after its dedication on
Mar. 25, 1371, John Luscote as Prior with his six choir
monks (the number seven was probably not an accident)
and one lay brother entered into possession of the few
cells which had arisen upon the west wing, and perhaps
partly on the north wing of the future Great Cloister.*
We saw the Founder, Manny, laid to his rest in the convent
church in the January of the next year, 1372. And from
that time the House progressed, but by no means with the
rapidity which, not unnaturally, most writers have assumed
for it. We know now from the monk's manuscript
(M. S.M.I.), which we shall have to quote so largely, that
at the death of John Luscote in June, 1398, the monastery
was still unfinished. For after enumerating the cells and
their founders the compiler says :—
" All the aforesaid cells were not built and scarcely
founded in the beginning of the first foundation. Nor
even in the days of the Venerable Father Danf John
Luscote, who remained Prior for the space of 27 \ years ;
for after his death, which we believe to have been happy,
five or six cells, the chapterhouse, with the remaining
chapels built beside the church, the frater, the pharmacy,
the parlor, the pavement and ceiling of the cloister, the
* It will help the reader if he remembers that the Great Cloister
represents " Upper Green " in Charterhouse School days : now
Merchant Taylors playground.
t Dan is the old English equivalent of Dom = Dominus.
54
THE MONASTERY 55
conduit, an enclosure of strong walls to strengthen and
surround the whole House, and various other things
remained to be built and made."
We find another passage to the same effect, with,
however, an addition so important that it needs to be
quoted in full : —
" And although they have nineteen most beautiful
cells built and occupied, there yet remain to be built five
or six cells, and the chapterhouse, frater, pharmacy,
parlor, and the Chapel of St. Anne now just begun, with
the intention that women may hear masses there and so
gradually be excluded from the church. A barrier of
strong walls to surround as a river all the House, the
pavement of the Greater Cloister with its ceiling, the
church also to be enlarged, and many other things remain
to be made and built, so that the sum of the expenses so
far incurred, according to common estimate, amount to
1750£ sterling and more."
This passage is of great interest from several points of
view. First, though the compilation was made not earlier
than 1480, and perhaps later, the use of the present tense,
and the words " now just begun " show that the compiler
copied out his extract verbatim from a record made eighty
years earlier. But the chief interest lies in the statement
that hitherto women had not been excluded from a
Carthusian church. The causes, both of this and of the
unenclosed state of the Priory, are not far to seek. The
London Charterhouse took shape at the hour of a great
crisis in the history of the country. The Black Death,
with its sequence of lesser plagues, had left behind it much
misery and that demoralisation which has always gone
with and after such visitations. And the long French
wars, perpetually calling away the picked manhood of the
country, had filled up the cup of bitterness for the working
classes. The entire absorption of the King and his nobles
in these wars, to the neglect of the social condition of the
country, had led to over-taxation, to misgovernment, to
anarchy. The condition of London was hardly better
56 OUR MONASTERY FROM 1371
than that of the country. The municipal government of
London repeated all the evil features of the kingly misrule.
The city rulers were divided into two camps, headed
respectively by John of Northampton, representing the
smaller companies, and in a sense the commonalty, and
the party of the all-powerful monopoly of the Fishmongers'
Company, under Nicholas Brembre. And armed bands
met in open strife in the streets of London to the paralysis
of its trade. It was all over England, but especially in
London and in the counties lying nearest to it, a period
of seething unrest. The populace, both in town and
country, looked with growing hatred and suspicion at the
religious orders, whom they regarded as in some sort
locked up with the interests of the wealthier classes. The
influence of Wiclif and his followers accentuated the
feeling. The teaching of John Ball was typical of the
growing spirit. And at such a moment the attempted
closing of a large area of ground which the commonalty
had come to believe was theirs by right prescriptive was
bound to create a threatening attitude towards the new
Charterhouse in Smithfield, regarded as the playground of
the London prentice. It becomes plain, as we read the
record, that the new foundation in its first thirty years
met with difficulties which, if faced by a less forceful man
than Luscote, would, perhaps, have ended in the failure
of the monastery. Apart from the opposition of the
leading ecclesiastics, unknown to us by name, which
probably cooled the ardour of possible supporters and
checked the stream of bequests, the Prior, fearless man as
he was, dared not carry out the complete exclusion which
the rules of the order required. For twenty-three years
after the Black Death, before the little church which stood
in that mournful God's acre, had become a Carthusian
church, the people, men and women, mothers, wives,
sisters, had resorted to the little building day and night
to pray for the souls of their lost ones. And the people
were in no mood to be shut out from a use that had grown so
dear to them. Luscote did not dare to excite a mob that
from time to time showed itself ready for deeds so dangerous.
DOOR OF B CELL: WEST WALL OF GREAT CLOISTER. 1371.
CELL DOOR IX EAST WALL GREAT CLOISTER. 1371.
THE MONASTERY 57
The story, however, had better be told from the manuscript.
After describing a riot " about this time " (that is, before
the middle of 1371), on Maunday Thursday and Good
Friday, when the mob attacked St. Paul's, and did great
injury, the story goes on : —
" On the Monday before Ascension Day, 1371, that
same good William (Walworth) came to the said church
of the New Foundation of the Mother of God and two
priests with him ready to celebrate with sundry others.
Prior Luscote met him. On that day William Walworth
laid the foundation of his first cell,* and upon the stone he
placed 20 shillings sterling as a solacium to the workmen.
He also heard two masses, and so went with God's protection
to the Hall,f whither the citizens had been coming. . . .
That day, after entertaining the Mayor of the City and the
alderman into his house . . . they went out to the Tower
of London with those who had been given into custody for
the aforesaid sedition, and so having put them in prison,
the tumult ceased . . . who having been beaten and not
killed after a little time by the mediation of the said William
Walworth and other good men they were brought out of
prison and restored to their own. Blessed be God. . . .
Afterwards the said William built four other cells, and
gave of his own goods and of the goods of John Lovekyn f
aforesaid 1000 marks sterling, and many good things §
both in his life and after his death he bestowed on this
House. Moved also by his example and fervour a certain
very rich citizen, Adam Fraunceys by name, sometime
Mayor of London, a man much given to almsgiving, built
another five cells for the construction of which he gave
1000 marks sterling," etc., etc.
* This is easily identified as cell B, whose door and hatch are
still visible in the portion of the west wall in the arcade still known
as " cloisters."
t This was probably the Guildhall, Walworth being sheriff that
year.
t John Lovekyn, Lord Mayor in 1348, 58, 65, 66, founder of
Fishmongers' Hall, died 1365. Walworth had been his apprentice
and became bis executor.
§ We learn also that though Sir Walter de Manny founded
Cell A, now no longer visible, since it disappeared when the Monks'
Refectory took its place, yet Walworth bore half the expense of the
cell.
58 OUR MONASTERY FROM 1371
The riot alluded to occurred, it will be seen, in 1371,
and was due solely to the populace of London. But ten
years later, in 1381, at the great peasant rising when the
men of Kent, of Essex, and the eastern counties converged
upon London, and the mob held the town for two days,
Wat Tyler's lieutenant, Jack Straw, laid the Priory of St.
John of Jerusalem — the home of the hated military knights
— in ashes. It was a mere stone's throw distant from our
monastery bounds. Before Sir William Walworth, Mayor
that year, had ended the peril of London by slaying the
peasant leader, Wat Tyler, in front of St. Bartholomew's,
not 400 yards from Charterhouse Gatehouse, our monastery
must have stood in the gravest risk. But since no special
connection is made in the MS. between the events of
those terrible days and the attack on the monastery,
which must now be quoted, we can only suppose that it
did not occur during Wat Tyler's rebellion, and that at
that particular crisis, perhaps for lack of opportunity, our
Charterhouse escaped.
" In the year of our Lord, 1405, were hallowed the
altars of the Holy Cross and St. Anne in the chapel of St.
Anne at the west end of the church, and this was done of
a purpose that women could there hear masses and so by
degrees be shut out of the church. For from the beginning
of the first foundation women were always wont to enter
the church, and the brethren for fear of the common folk
did not dare to forbid them. But the untamed people
of the commonalty of London conspired in many injuries
and terrors on them and other religious. ..."
[Here follows an account of the mob which destroyed
a block of houses near St. Paul's, which had invaded, they
said, their common rights.]
" On another occasion, too, they came with horrid
tumult and blaring trumpets to the House of the nuns of
Clerkenwell, and having applied fire which they had
brought with them, they set alight the gates of it, together
with the bars, posts, and hedges, and destroyed the
THE MONASTERY 59
enclosures, alleging that they were some time used to play
there and exercise. . . . And later, while they were going,
as it had been agreed between them, to that House of the
Salutation of the Mother of God to destroy not only the
enclosures, but all the cells, as they declared, affirming
that before the laying out of the cells themselves, and
within many years in the place where the cells have been
built, and all around as if in a public place belonging to
the said commonalty, they had races and practised divers
games ; which was true, but only by permission and not
of right or any other title of law. But by the will of God
it happened that two or three of them fearing God with-
stood the multitude with great difficulty and with supplica-
tion turned them from their wicked purpose, but only for
that day. For there were in those days many followers
of the damnable sect of the Lollards. And on other
occasions they came in greater numbers . . . and on
their third and fourth coming they surrounded the whole
House and its bounds in a ring, spying out as the sons of
Israel the city of Jericho, and went inside and placed
new bounds and limits according to their will for a long
distance within the former bounds and limits and caused
the old walls and the buildings within to be destroyed and
removed and threatened to destroy the whole House.
For such reasons the Prior and brethren feared to offend
the said commonalty.
" In 1405 Dan Henry and Dan Everard, Priors of the
Blessed Virgin Mary in Holland and of Diest, visited the
province of England, and made the following regulation
for that House, and wrote in their charter as follows :
' And because it is forbidden by the most illustrious Prince
the Lord King of England [Henry IV] that women enter
the House of the Mother of God near London or even a
chapel contained in the length of the same church, because
from the beginning of the House neither Prior nor convent
for fear of the common folk had dared to forbid them.
Therefore in the strictest way that we could we have
commanded the Prior and Procurator that as soon as they
can they cause a wall to be built around the church, as
we have directed them, and that they do not allow women
to enter within it under the pains of the new statutes
[nova statuta], and that no monk, except the Prior and
Procurator, ever go beyond the said wall. We also most
60 OUR MONASTERY FROM 1371
strictly forbid the Prior from causing a sermon to be
preached in the outer cemetery * of the House.'
" After this order the Monks, except the Prior and the
Procurator, did not go out of the gate made in the said
wall to this day for any cause whatever, not even for the
funeral of any dead person. For before that order the
Monks went as far as the outer gate of the said cemetery
to meet the funerals of the dead."
The record explains to us a fact probably without
parallel in the history of the Order — the admission of
women to the conventual church — a fact due, admittedly,
to the stress of the situation. It must be observed that
admission to the church cannot be supposed to apply to
the part within the choir shut off for the use of the choir
monks. It can only have applied to the more western
portion, probably not even to the space of the floor reserved
for the lay brothers, but rather the space further west,
yet still within the precincts of the church. Few episodes
more interesting have ever come to light in the history of
our House.
Meanwhile, and in the more troubled times before the
succession of Henry IV had brought some amount of
comparative restfulness, Prior Luscote had gone to his rest.
The record runs thus : —
"Be it remembered that Guy de Burgh was shaved
in the House of Beauvale of the Carthusians, A.D. 1354,
and when called came to the House of the Mother of God,
Nov. 10, 1370, the house of whose cell began to be built
in the week of Pentecost next following. Also on the
15th June, 1398, died the Venerable John Luscote . . . not
merely the first Prior, but another Founder. His body was
buried in the cemetery of the said House within the
cloisters, according to his desire, at the feet of Guy the
Monk, whose life is known to have been most holy, opposite
to the cloister door by which one goes from the cloister to
the Guest House at a distance of 30 feet from the same
door. I found these things written concerning these two
fathers."
* i.e. Charterhouse Churchyard (or Square).
THE MONASTERY 61
This passage fixes for us the position of the little burial
ground where, in the manner of the Carthusians, a Monk or
Prior, or Lay Brother, is laid in his habit, without coffin,
face downward, with no memorial nor record save the little
wooden cross which perishes in a few years. So was it
with Guy the Monk and John Luscote our first Prior. The
spot where they lie cannot be accurately fixed, since the
exact position of the door from the cloisters cannot be
gauged. But the cemetery lay in the south-west corner
of the Great Cloister, and somewhere there, unrecorded,
lie the quiet bones of the men who set the seal of their own
fine qualities on the monastery which they had helped to
make.
The stern order of the provincial visitors deprived the
London monks of the privilege of the " Spatiamentum,"
which had already become a custom perhaps in all Charter-
houses.* No doubt the peculiar circumstances required
it, for it must not be forgotten that though the House was
described as " near London," it was, in fact, within earshot
of tilts and tournaments, fairs and races, and every kind
of cause which brought men together in large crowds.
It was, indeed, not long after this, in the year 1424, that
the visitors once more found grave fault in that the servants
of the monastery were wont to go forth, and even with the
Prior and Procurator, clad in parti-coloured clothes. These
were doubtless the Donati. In an age which expressed
its fancy in stripes and patches, the servitors of the great
men who frequented the playing-grounds of Smithfield
doubtless went as gay as their masters, and one can well
understand the temptation to the servants of the monastery
to imitate them, though one can only wonder that the
monastery allowed it. It was, indeed, a charge brought
against other Monastic Orders of the day that they both
went abroad themselves in unbefitting garb and allowed
their servants to do the same. But the former of these
two charges at least was not brought against the Carthu-
sians. The first we hear of anything of the kind was
when the pseudo-prior of Beau vale, Thomas Cromwell's
* It is mentioned as early as the thirteenth century.
F
62
man, put in after the surrender, presented himself to welcome
the commissioners at his gatehouse clad in a short velvet
mantle.
But the correction of any growing abuse was always,
under the visiting system of the Carthusians, well and
faithfully and speedily done, and the pied appearance of
the Donati soon ceased to give trouble. Meanwhile, the
completion of the buildings necessary to the monastery
went slowly forward. In July 15, 1414, we read of the
hallowing of the altars in the Chapterhouse in honour of
St. Michael and all the Blessed Spirits, another in honour of
the Trinity, St. Peter and St. Paul, and yet another on
the north side in honour of St. John Baptist and St.
Hugh, by the Bishop of London (Richard Clifford). And
it may be accepted that this must have been practically
the date of the completion of the Chapterhouse itself,
which stood to the east of the church. We have already
spoken of the hallowing of the Greater Bell * on July 18,
1428, by Dan Richard Fleming, Bishop of Lincoln, to the
honour of the Virgin, and then follows an entry of the
greatest interest.
" In 1431 there entered into the Great Cloister the
conduit built of the goods of William Symmes and Anne
Tatersale ; which William gave to the construction of the
said aqueduct 300 marks. Also that Christ's poor might
the more freely and lawfully enjoy such great benefit of
water, etc., etc. . . . 220 marks."
The original deed between John Feriby and his wife
Margery, daughter of Sir James Bernersbury (Barnsbury),
on the one hand, and the Prior and Convent on the other,
is still in existence. It bears date 1430, and is witnessed
by the celebrated Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, brother
of Henry VI. It had long been lost note of, but it
reappeared at the sale of the Phillips Manuscripts, and was
bought by the present Master of Charterhouse, and
placed in the school museum at Godalming. There is
* This is the bell, re-cast, which still tolls the curfew night after
night.
THE MONASTERY 63
little reason to doubt that the great parchment roll now
in the Muniment Room of Charterhouse in London was
the record of the water supply, its conduits, pipes, and
pits, half ground plan, half elevation, which was originally
attached to this deed in 1430. For though there are many
entries on that plan in several hands of a later period (and
one of these is actually dated 1511), it is quite clear that
much erasure has taken place, many rewritings * and
additions have been made (as, for instance, eight springs
or contributory sources in place of the original four), and
the plan generally treated as a consulting record kept up
to date. It is on four skins of parchment, sewn together,
to a length of 9 feet 11 inches, and with a breadth of 1 foot
8 1 inches. It is drawn in a brownish ink, the details
heightened by colour, and it traces the entire course of
the supply from the highest springs (called wells) to the
final discharge at Charterhouse. This parchment, like the
deed, had at one time ceased to be in the care of our
Muniment Room. On May 1, 1746, as we learn from a
minute of the Archaeological Society, it belonged to Francis
Godolphin, Esq., who, by 1747, had given it to Nicholas
Mann, Master of Charterhouse, who in turn gave it to his
successor, Samuel Salter, from whom it passed to the
Muniment Room. Beginning from the plot of ground
53 perches long and 12 feet wide in Islington at the place
called Obermead in the Manor of Barnersbury, the pipes
passed by agreement through the lands of the Priory of
St. John of Jerusalem at Clerkenwell, through the field
called Nonnes or Nonys field, belonging to the Nuns of
Clerkenwell, then through a meadow called Whitwell
Beach (which, now built over, is the property of the
governors of Charterhouse), after passing through the
building known as the White Conduit, which till 1831
stood one mile from Charterhouse still bearing Sutton's
Arms. On approaching what is now Clerkenwell Road it
passed through Pardon Chapel, whose shape is clearly
* Most of these rewritings have been made over earlier erased
entries, and appear to have been entered after 1512, and probably
during the time when the monastery was being largely remodelled
under Prior Tynbygh.
64 OUR MONASTERY FROM 1371
outlined on the parchment, and so across the monk's
wilderness to its final destination in the " Conduit " or
fountain in the middle of the Great Cloister. This is, of
course, a familiar feature in almost all the Charterhouses
of Europe. In our case, as in most others, the water was
distributed by four main pipes to the four wings of the
cloister, and gave to each cell, as it seems, its supply of
water in its little garden. The exits or " ayes " of the
pipes at various points on the south side of the buildings,
and even in the Flesh Kitchen or Egypt of Charterhouse
Yard are also clearly indicated. Indeed it must be thought
of as an accurate plumber's plan in which every detail of
the actual water supply is to be trusted. But the plan
must not be treated as if it were a scale drawing of the
buildings themselves even in the incomplete condition in
which they stood in 1430-31. For example, the church
is represented in elevation with no small care as viewed
from the Great Cloister on the north. This of necessity
hides from view all the chapels and buildings attached to
it on the south. While, therefore, the plan of the pipes
and cocks on that side is mapped with care, the actual
ground plan of the chapels and buildings is omitted, not
being essential to the purposes of the map. Again, the
Little Cloister is indicated in summary fashion, but without
any divisions of the buildings which existed around it,
and without the Chapel of St. Mary Magdalene which
opened out of it. The gatehouse is represented because a
pipe led through it, but it appears as a detached building,
the wall which united it (probably on the line of the modern
wall) not being mapped. The " botery cok " is indicated,
but the buttery itself is omitted. So, too, the cock and
vat in the brewhouse, without the building. Indeed, none
of the obediences of the lay brothers (Washhouse Court, etc.)
and none of the monastery barns and outhouses, which
stood where now the Preachers' and Pensioners' Courts are
seen, find a place on the map. Its use, therefore, as
evidence must always be blunted by this reserve. Never-
theless, it is by far the most important document which
we possess for the reconstruction of the monastery in the
THE MONASTERY 65
fifteenth century. Unhappily a later copy, made evidently
for clearness' sake in consequence of the many erasures in
the original plan, has lost one of its four skins, and that
the very skin which would have, perhaps, given us the
amended plan of the monastery after the alterations in the
first third of the sixteenth century.*
The next entry of interest in the MS. says : —
" In 1436 the Little Cloister was built between the
church and the guesthouse of the goods of John Clyderhow,
and the altar in the chapel there was hallowed in honour
of St. Mary Magdalene."
Next we read : —
" In 1475, July 29, was hallowed an altar in the chapel
of St. Agnes on the north side of the church where formerly
the parlour f was, of which chapel the founder was William
Freeman, sometime Clerk of St. John of Jerusalem in
England."
And the last entry of the M.S.M.I. is : —
" 1481. On the feast of St. Lucy, Virgin and Martyr
(Oct. 13), was hallowed the altar and a chapel built in the
same year in the cemetery without the wall [Charter-
house Churchyard or Square] which the aforesaid
visitors from over the sea [i.e. the visitors of 1405] had
caused to be built. The first founder of which [chapel] was
Robert Hislett, whose intention was that the altar with
the chapel should be hallowed in honour of the Assumption
of the Most Blessed Virgin Mary. But Dan Edmund
* The monastic water supply remained as the only water supply
of Sutton's Hospital till 1767, when the master reported that the
pipes (mostly of elmwood) which conveyed the water from the
white conduit were stopped up. On May 21, J767, a contract was
entered into with the New River Company. Some thirty-five years ago
the foundations of the conduit in the Great Cloister were accidentally
opened up. Unfortunately no record was made of what was then
found.
t The position of the later locutorium or parlour in which the
Prior held audiences with his monks and visitors is not known.
Probably it was moved to the east wing of the Little Cloister, where,
it is thought, the later Priors' quarters were situated.
66 OUR MONASTERY FROM 1371
[Storer], then Prior of the House, wished the said altar
with the chapel to be hallowed in honour of All Saints.
When the day of hallowing came the Bishop Suffragan of
the Bishop of London, who was summoned for this purpose,
understanding the wishes of the said Prior and of Robert,
hallowed the altar with the aforesaid chapel in honour of
the most Blessed and Ever Virgin Mary and all the
Saints."
In explanation of this entry the reader must be reminded
that when New Churche Hawe was enclosed as a Carthusian
monastery, and its soil no longer available for burials,
a small portion of some 3 acres was cut off and left outside
for the use of the public. This became known as Charter-
house Churchyard, and is now Charterhouse Square. The
chapel mentioned above was, of course, the chapel of the
cemetery. It became, in 1543, with the cemetery itself,
which seems by that time to have ceased to be used, the
property of Sir Edward North. Our Muniment Room has
a document of May 13, 1561, by which the latter (then Lord
North) conveyed the fabric of the building, whose contents
are elaborately set forth, to one Thomas Cotton, a school-
master. We learn that the chapel was built of brick and
tile. We hear of pews and seats in plenty ; of lockers,
clasps, and bolts ; of matting and green saye ; of wainscot
doors and fittings ; of a screen or partition between the
choir and the body of the chapel. All of which have
entirely disappeared from sight.
These additions, and the gradual development of the
convent up to the end of the fifteenth century, imply a
steady accession of wealth. The convent record, and the
evidence of the registered wills of the century, confirm this
fact. We find recorded by theM.S.M.L not a few indentures *
between the monks on the one hand, and on the other of
pious persons desirous to secure for the souls of themselves
or their dear ones the prayers for ever of the Carthusians.
* One may remind the reader that an indenture was a document
endorsed in duplicate, and then separated, cutting the parchment
in an indented line, each party to the contract retaining one-half
of the indenture.
THE MONASTERY 67
So, too, in the wills of the period a large number of bequests
are found always with the same condition expressed or
implied. A few only of these may be quoted, though the
entire series throws interesting light on the life of that
age.
John Hastings, Earl of Pembroke (d. 1375), who had
married Anne, daughter of Sir Walter Manny, made a
will May 5, 1372, leaving to the Charterhouse, London,
beyond Newgate, the remainder of the sum CCCC pounds
" which I have in part granted to that House in fulfilment
of a vow I made in Guienne." One of the witnesses is
William of Wykeham. A later will, however, omits this
bequest, which had probably been made good to the
monastery in the meantime.
A typical will is that of Felicia Pentry, relict of John.
It bears date May 19, 1381. She is to be buried in the
church [this is interesting] of the Carthusian House, near
West Smythefeld, near the tomb of her late husband.
She leaves to the Prior and monks of the said house certain
rents issuing from her tenement called " le Holceler,'* in
the Parish of St. Margaret Bruggestret, so that they observe
her obit and the obit of her late husband at the Feast of
St. Boniface, Bishop and Martyr, Jan. 5, with Requiem
and Placebo and Dirige with music on the vigil of the said
feast.
The will of Cecilia Rose, relict of Thomas Rose, clerk,
June 10, 1380, describes the monks as " the Religious
called Chartres * living at the New Churcheyard without
Aldrichegate."
Sir William de Walleworth, Dec. 20, 1385, whose
benefactions to the place have already been mentioned,
left remainder to the Carthusian House of the Salutation
of the B.V. Mary, near London, with the reversion of
certain tenements in the Parish of St. Christopher in
Bradestrete in return for their prayers.
The will of the celebrated John of Northampton
* In these wills the monastery is found described as " The
Charterhouse," " Charterhouse," " Charthus," " Charthous," " Char-
tres," etc. The variations mark the period of transition from the
original Chartreuse to its final English form Charterhouse.
68
(Dec. 15, 1397), draper and freeman, the friend of William
Walworth, and the deadly foe of the ill-fated Nicholas
Brembre, is very interesting. After other bequests he
leaves Remainder to the Church of the Salutation of the
Mother of God of the Carthusian order near London, and
of the Convent of the same for pious uses. On the day of
his obit half a mark of silver of the profits of the said
tenements [in All Hallows the Great at the Hay in the
Ropery] to be expended on the pittance (dinner) for the
convent and each monk is to have half a pound of ginger,
and at every Lent each monk is to have a pound of dates,
a pound of figs, and a pound of raisins beyond his usual
allowance. In case of default in carrying out his
wishes the aforesaid property to go to the mayor and
corporation.
This kind of safeguard — reversion in case of default
to some other beneficiary — is quite common in wills of the
day, and to avoid needless repetition it may be added
that both the wills and gifts by indenture make frequent
provision for pittance of the above kind, to the occupant
of the cell or cells whose special duty it was to pray for
the souls of the testator. The will of William Estfeld, Mar.
14, 1445, which incidentally, by the bequest of the " Coler
of Gold " given him by the King [Henry VI], tells us that
his son-in-law was Humphry de Bohun, leaves to the
convent a cask of red Gascony wine.
The will of John Bedham, fishmonger, June 15, 1472,
is of interest, since it provides for the maintenance of
lamps to be kept burning over the tombs of Richard
Clyderhow and of John Popham, Knight, with observance
of an obit for the soul of William Baron. All these three
persons were buried in Charterhouse.
The will of Richard Chawry, alderman [of Candlewick
ward] and freeman, Oct. 18, 1508, leaves remainder so
that the names of the said Robert [Rede, Knight, Lord Chief
Justice of the Common Bench] and Margaret [wife of
Robert] be placed in the codex of the convent called le
Martylage * Boke to be remembered in prayers.
* Martyrologium or Martilogium, originally a register of the
THE MONASTERY 69
One of the latest bequests by will proved 1515, though
it had been made on April 7, 1503, is that of Thomas
Thwaites, Mercer of London, and Burgess of Calais —
wherefore the will is to be proclaimed both at Poules Cross
and in Calais. He is to be buried in the Chapel of St.
Jerome [founded by Sir John Popham, 1453] within the
Chartyrhous, to which chapel he leaves all his jewels and
stuff of his chapel for use therein and to every brother of
the said House twelve pence, together with the reversion
of certain lands in Aldermanbury.
These few examples out of a long list of bequests, gifts,
and indentures will serve to show not only one chief source
of the monastery wealth, but also the bond of special
affection which in that age tied the hearts of so many of
the people of England, but especially of London, to that
little spot outside the busy city, where day by day prayer
went up for the souls of their dear ones. To their imagina-
tion it was a Vale of Rest in which by day and night the
white monks did sentinel duty for the spirits of the departed.
From the highest in the land to the lowliest it stood for
the peace of the soul. A John of Gaunt, a Robert Knollys,
a Thomas More, might resort hither for quiet retreat,
and the poorest woman of the town who had knelt in the
Chapel of St. Anne, carried comfort with her as she stole
back across the meadows to her home in the crowded
street. And above all there was a belief strong and well
grounded in an age where confidence in all the orders was
no longer general that the lives which were lived within
those walls were worthy of their task. He who reads this
last sentence may therefore feel surprise that I do not
much enlarge on the lives of individual monks, more or less
familiar to us, nor try to establish their personalities. The
life of a cloistered monk makes little material for biography.
Those who have read the chapter which deals with the
daily round of the Carthusian will realise this. It is to
names of saints and martyrs. Later it denoted a register of the
obits and benefactions of those who had been received into the
fraternity of the congregation, and whose names were thus recalled
to mind. It was also called Necrologinm ; also Liber Vitse, album,
or annal. See Nicolas on " Wills."
70 OUR MONASTERY FROM 1371
the monk who violates the spirit of the order that we should
look for anything that helps to make history, to a Nicholas
Hopkins of Witham, or to an Andrew Boorde of London,
but hardly to those whose life is silence. It is, perhaps,
not to be wondered at if Carthusian writers in dearth of
stronger material have sometimes embroidered strange
visionary matter upon the simple white robe of the monk,
but one cannot think it well. It may raise a kindly smile
in us when we read how, about 1393, Dan John Homersley,*
of saintly life, who inhabited cell T, founded by Sir
William Ufford, was there visited by two devils, one of
whom gave his name as Asmodeus, and how failing entirely
in cell T they visited a good old monk, Dan Thomas
Clughe, with like result — but it cannot add to our belief,
nor yet for that matter detract from it, that the men
were of saintly life. Nor when we read how Dan John
Darley, who grumbled at his food, and once said he would
rather eat toads than such fish as was served, presently
found himself invaded in his garden and cell by toads who
infested it for three months, and how when he put one in
the fire it hopped out again, and how another whom he
seized with the tongs, smelt diabolically, as other monks
bore witness ; and how Prior Tynbygh was assaulted by
devils and left for dead, sore wounded on the floor of his
cell. To what end such tales ? We may surely ask to
believe that the wrestlings with self of the Carthusians was
of nobler texture and none the less real than this ; and
that the robust saintliness of a St. Bruno or a St. Hugh,
of a Nicolas Albergati or of a John Houghton, grew to its
strength out of sterner, truer stuff than this. And it is
with the truest reverence, and not from any lack of it,
that a writer may well prefer to leave to their honourable
silence the lives of men who stand in need of no such
doubtful embellishments.
* He was in his turn buried at the feet of John Luscote, as the
latter had been buried at the feet of Guy de Burgh.
THE CELLS 71
ORDER OF THE CELLS IN THE GREAT CLOISTER, WITH
THE NAMES OF THEIR FOUNDERS FROM CHARTULARIES
OF CHARTERHOUSE, 61, RECORD OFFICE. [M.S.M.I.]
West Wing.
A. Sir Walter de Mannay * [and partly Sir William
Walworth].
B. Sir William Walworth f (door of cell still exists).
C. Sir Adam Fraunceys J (door still to be traced).
D. Sir William Walworth (position apparently traceable).
E. Sir Adam Fraunceys.
„ o- AJ ( One of these cells existed in
r !•' w^ wT63^ \ s<™e completion up to
G. Sir William Walworth. 1 Ig72
North Wing.
H. Sir William Walworth.
J. Sir William Walworth.
K. Lady Margaret of St. Paul,§ Countess of Pembrock.
* Sir Walter Mannay (d. 1372), " first founder " of the monastery.
See Chap. IV.
t Sir William Walworth (d. 1385), native of Darlington, of good
family. Became apprentice to John Lovekyn, founder of the
Fishmongers' Company. Alderman of the Bridge Ward ; Sheriff ;
Lord Mayor, 1374 and 1384. Enlarged St. Michael's, Crooked Lane,
and founded a college there. In 1381 built one of the two towers
which on either side of the river with a chain between protected
the shipping of London, and in the same year slew Wat Tyler in
West Smithfield in presence of Richard II, who knighted him.
He founded the five cells in the Great Cloister partly as executor of
John Lovekyn, and partly with his own money. [The cell door of
No. 2 cell survives.]
J Sir Adam Fraunceys, Frauncis, or Francis, Mercer ; Lord
Mayor, 1352-1353. A man of mark in his day. Founded " the
colledge in the Chapel of the Guildhall." His daughter, Maud,
married John Mpntacute (d. 1400), 3rd Earl of Salisbury, the Lollard
champion who, in 1395, fixed the Lollard manifesto on the doors of
St. Paul's and Westminster Abbey ; and after the deposition of
Richard II made a plot for his restoration, but falling into the
hands of the mob at Cirencester, after surrender, was there summarily
executed. At the death of Adam Fraunceys his burial was placed
in the hands of Simon of Sudbury, the unhappy archbishop who was
beheaded in the Tower by the mob in the Wat Tyler Rebellion,
1381. Adam Fraunceys paid 1000 marks sterling for the construction
of his five cells.
§ Lady Mary of St. Paul [S. Pol near Agincourt], Countess of
Pembroke (d. 1376), daughter of Count Guy IV de Chatillon, third
wife of Aymer de Valence (d. 1324), whom she survived by fifty
years. She was the foundress of Pembroke Hall, Cambridge. She
had given the sum of 200 pounds and other money gifts for
72 OUR MONASTERY FROM 1371
L. Sir Adam Fraunceys.
M. Sir Adam Fraunceys.
N. Thomas Aubrey * and Alicia [or Felicia], his wife.
O. Margaret, wife of Frederic Tilney f [Thymelby].
East Wing.
P. Robert Knolles J [Knollys] and dame Constance, his
wife.
the foundation of the cell in her lifetime, no mention being made
of it in her will, which leaves her body to be buried in Denny Abbey,
Cambs., where her tomb was prepared. She speaks of her husband,
Aymer, " who lieth buried in the Abbey of Westminster." The
tomb, one of the most beautiful surviving instances of early
fourteenth-century sculpture, is in the north ambulatory of the
Abbey, to which also she left her " Cross with a foot of gold and
emerald which Sir William de Valence brought from the Holy Land."
By the indenture with the Monks of Charterhouse prayers were to
be made for the soul of Aymer and William de Valence, and Joan,
his wife. For her mother, the Lady Mary, and her father, Guy.
* Thomas Aubrey and Alicia or Felicia, his wife. He was
probably of the family of John Aubrey, Lord Mayor in 1374, who
was buried in Charterhouse. Alicia appears to have been the
daughter of Mary de St. Pol.
t Margaret or Margery Tilney, also written Thymelby and
Tibury, gave 260 marks for the foundation and endowment of
this cell.
$ Sir Robert Knolles or Knollys (d. 1407), and Dame Constance,
his wife. He was of uncertain origin, and presently became the
most capable and the most ferocious of all the train-band leaders
of his day. As the commander of " the Great Company " he ravaged
France from end to end, and for the third of a century was the
dread of every homestead in France. He was known as " the old
Brigand," and the blackened gable ends of the ruins he had made
were known as " Knolles Mitres." Acknowledging neither God nor
man as master, he was yet always loyal to his view of the interests
of Edward III and of his native land. His principle of war was at
least logical. It was to inflict by any means all the injury possible
on the foe. To chivalry, as it was understood by such a man as
Manny, he was wholly a stranger, and so, too, to pity. He ravaged
Brittany from sea to sea. He swept Normandy from Carentoin
to Rouen, and thence raided France from Nevers to Orleans, and
from Toulouse to Vezelay. Having threatened to capture the Pope
himself at Avignon, he came within a few leagues of fulfilling his
promise. In 1356 Parliament had to petition Edward III that for
his services to England his crimes as a freebooter might receive a
free pardon, such as had been granted to Sir John Hawkwood
(presently to become the savage but capable condottiere of Urban VI).
Twice in his career he made Du Guesclin a prisoner, but was after-
wards defeated by him at Pont Vallain. And so, after a long career
of incredible incident, he at length was allowed, on payment of a
large sum to Edward, to return from his outlawry, to England,
where, on the day when Wat Tyler was slain by Walworth, Knolles
rode beside Richard, and, it is said, urged mercy towards the peasant
mob, though Froissart describes the exact contrary. The last
THE CELLS 78
Q. Dan John Bokyngham, Bishop of Lincoln.*
K. Dan Thomas Hatfield, Bishop of Durham.f
S. Dan Thomas Hatfield, Bishop of Durham.
record of his military service was in 1379, when he saved Nantes by
personal bravery, in which he was never wanting. The later years
of his life seem to have been spent in the north of England. He
founded a college in Rome in conjunction with his old comrade —
one of his own sort — Sir John Hawkwood. He rebuilt the bridge of
Rochester, which had been destroyed in 1356. He founded the hostel
for poor men at Pontefract, known as the Knolles Almshouses, and
he rebuilt the churches of Sculthorpe and Harpley. In London he
was a benefactor to the Carmelites of Whitefriars, and, as we have
seen, to our own Carthusians. When the light failed him at Scul-
thorpe on Aug. 15, 1407, it closed upon a life which for bravery
and savagery, for diabolical cruelty, and for belated and perhaps
remorseful piety, for picturesque incident, and for military capacity,
has, perhaps, no equal in European history. Of his wife, Constantia,
whom he married in 1360, little is known. She is said to have been
a native of Pomfret, of " mene birth," but her armorial bearings
seem to be an evidence to the contrary.
* Dan John Bokyngham (d. 1398), Bishop of Lincoln from 1303 ;
prebendary of Lichfield, 1349 ; Archdeacon of Northampton, 1351 ;
Keeper of the Privy Seal to Edward III. Translated, much against
his will, to Lichfleld, 1397, to make room, by a shameless process,
for Henry Beaufort, he retired to Monastery of Christ Church,
Canterbury, where he died, 1398. Took tardy and reluctant action
against the Lollards, condemning to the stake, 1382, William de
Swinderby, for whom John of Gaunt interceded. Swinderby
recanted, and was spared. He presided also at the strange suit in
which Cardinal Orsini claimed, in vain, the Archdeaconry of Lincoln
against the King's nominee. In the episcopate of Bokyngham there
were probably added to the Minster of Lincoln the upper part of
the two western towers, the row of sculptured kings on the west
front, the west windows of the aisles, and the beautiful stalls. He
was a benefactor to New College, Oxford, and helped to rebuild
Rochester Bridge.
t Dan Thomas Hatfield (d. 1381), Bishop of Durham, 1345-46.
Son of Walter of Hatfield in Holderness. At all times close in the
counsels of Edward III, whom he followed in the wars with France,
being present at the siege of Calais and the battle of Crecy. In
1346, being at his diocese during the Scotch invasion, he led one of
the four divisions of the English army at the battle of NeviU's Cross.
Once more, in 1356, he was left with Percy and Nevill to guard the
northern border. Soldier Bishop though he was, he was strenuous
and effective in his government of his See. A man of magnificence,
both in his person and in his manner of life, he left his mark on the
buildings of Durham. To him was due the keep and the Great Hall
of the Castle, now much reduced in length ; and he rebuilt much
of the southern portion of the nave of the Cathedral, with the
bishop's throne under which his tomb is placed. In his day the
struggle for precedence between the Sees of York and Durham was
at its height. He was uncle to Sir John Popham, who was buried
in the Great Cloister of Charterhouse. He gave 600 marks by
indenture for his two cells with the condition that the occupants
should ever pray for the souls of himself, his father (called John in
the indenture), his mother, Margery, and all his brothers and sisters,
and for the soul of Edward III.
74 OUR MONASTERY FROM 1371
T. Sir William Ufford, Earl of Suffolk.*
V. Richard Clyderhow f [Clitherow], Esquire, Armiger.
X. John Clyderhow, Clerk.J
South Wing, east of the church.
Y. William Symmes.§
Z. Dame Joan, formerly wife of William Brenche ||
[Brenchley], Knight.
S. Dame Margery Nerford, and Christophina Ypstones,^
her maid.
S. The name or names of the founder or founders are
known to God.
* William de Ufford (d. 1382), Earl of Suffolk. A man of high
character and achievement in a difficult age. He served loyally
through the French wars under Warwick, and other leaders, and
especially under John of Gaunt, to whom at home he was cordially
opposed. As warden of the ports of Norfolk and Suffolk, and chief
commissioner of the army, he so won the hearts of the suffering
peasantry that,' at their rising in 1381, they designed to place him
at their head. He had much ado to escape in disguise to King
Richard, for whom he presently suppressed the rising in the Eastern
Counties with no gentle hand. The peasantry revenged themselves
by burning several of his mansions, yet presently returned, and
perhaps with good reason, to their belief in him as their chief and
most trusty friend ; for their treatmenttof him in no way lessened his
concern on their behalf. When he died suddenly in Westminster
Hall on Feb. 13, 1382, Richard lost one whose councils possibly
might have saved the throne. His first wife was Joan, daughter of
Alice Brotherton, who was the daughter of Thomas Brotherton.
She was therefore of kin with Walter de Mannay. He left 420
marks by indenture for his cell, with prayers for the soul of himself,
Joan and Isabel, his wives, and his father, Robert, first Earl of
Suffolk, the great soldier who had fought at Crecy and Poitiers ; and
of his mother, Margery.
t Richard Clyderhow built his cell in his own lifetime, and
left no sealed indenture. Over his tomb, in Charterhouse, and that
of Sir John Popham,by the will of John Bedham, 1472, lamps were
kept burning day and night.
% John Clyderhow, Clerk. In 1436 the Little Cloister (Parvum
Claustrum) was built of his goods.
§ William Symmes, Grocer (d. 1436). He had also benefited
the monastery by many other gifts, in all amounting to over 1040
marks. This included the water supply and the great central
fountain (220) in conjunction with Anne Tatersall ; the pavement of
the Great Cloister, the repair of the upper part of the tops of the
walls of the church in hard stone, with an annual dole on his death day,
and 220 marks for other purposes. His cell cost 300 marks sterling.
II Dame Joan, widow of Sir William Brencheley, also called
Atte Lee, apparently the son of William Brencheley, Chandler.
The name was probably Brenche (as it appears in the list), the last
syllable Lee describing the family home.
If Dame Margery Nerford. This lady is mentioned in the will
of John Watney, Mercer, Jan. 4, 1425, as haying built a chapel in
St. Christopher's Church, to the repair of which the testator leaves
a bequest.
CHAPTER VIII
THE MONASTERY IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
LIST of Priors of Charterhouse from M.S.M.I. and Dom
Lawrence Hendrik's The London Charterhouse —
John Luscote,* 1371-1398, 27| years.
John Obredon, 1398-1413, 15| years, died Feb. 14, 1417.
John Maplestede, 1413-1439, 26| years (provincial
visitor of England from 1425).
John Thorne, 1429, 8 years.
John Walweyn or Walwan, 1 year, died Oct. 6, 1449.
f John Seyman or Seman, 1449-1469, 20 years,
resigned 1469, died Dec. 29, 1472.
Edmund Storan or Storer, about 9 years, till 1477.
John Walsyngham (M.S.M.I.) or Wolfringham (Hen-
driks), about 10 years, 1477-1487, died Jan. 30, 1490.
Richard Roche (possibly Rock, the learned writer),
1487 to June 27, 1499, died about 1515.
William Tynbygh or Tynbergh, 1499-1529.
John Batmanson,J 1529 to Nov. 16, 1531.
John Houghton,§ 1531 to Tuesday, May 4, 1535
(provincial visitor).
In the last year of the century, which was also the last
year of the Priorate of Richard Roche, the name of a
great Englishman becomes associated with the monastery.
Thomas More, the son of Judge John More, then a brilliant
young law student hardly come of age, went, says Erasmus,
* John Luscote, previously Prior of God's House of Hinton.
t Dugdale's Monasticon gives the name of Richard Boston as
Prior in 1472, but he is not accepted by the Carthusian authorities.
J John Batmanson, previously Prior of Hinton.
§ John Houghton, previously Prior of Beauvale.
75
76 IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
who had become his closely attached friend two years
before, to live near the Charterhouse for four years that
he might take part in the spiritual exercises of the
Carthusians, and devoted himself to vigils, fasts, and
prayers, and similar austerities. Some writers have
recorded this in a different shape, saying that More spent
four years as an actual inmate of the monastery. This is
highly improbable. It is true that at this time More's
ardent religious nature had turned his thoughts towards
life in the cloister. But it is hard to believe that he would
have been allowed, without any vows, without even
becoming an oblate (for there is no evidence that he was
this), to live for four years in the guesthouse, still less in
the cloister. It is true that the rule of to-day, by which
visits to the Carthusian monasteries are limited to ten
days, was not then made. But we must remember that at
this time More was a diligent student of law at Lincoln's
Inn, having chambers near there, and it is not even certain
that in 1499 he had completed his three years' Lectureship
at Furnival's Inn. Probably the expression of Erasmus
" near the Charterhouse " is the right one, and may be
explained as referring to his lodging near Lincoln's Inn,
hardly a quarter of an hour distant across the gardens and
meadows, from whence he could, while still pursuing his
profession, yet keep in touch with the monks and be in
daily attendance at their offices. His intentions, if he
ever seriously had any, of joining that or some other order
underwent a change at the end of four years. But fate
was once more to bring his line of life into close touch
with that of the Carthusians when, in 1535, awaiting his
own fate in the Tower, he saw from his window the
Carthusians led away to their cruel end. " Meg," said he
to his favourite daughter, Margaret Roper, " seest thou
that these blessed fathers be now as cheerful in going to
their deaths as bridegrooms to their marriages." Notable,
too, is it that, after More's execution, when ten Car-
thusians stood chained upright in filth and misery in
Newgate, awaiting Death the Deliverer, it was More's
adopted daughter, Margaret Clement, who played the part
SIR THOMAS MORE 77
of a good angel to the unhappy men. How far More had
kept touch in between the times with his old entertainers
we do not know, but the statement made by one writer
that it was probably " owing to the impurity of the
cloister " that More changed his intention, is certainly, so
far as Charterhouse is concerned, one of the most wantonly
gratuitous libels that even religious controversy has pro-
duced. No such charge has ever been brought by any
writer against the London Charterhouse, and even at the
Suppression, when the ill-famed commissioners, Roland
Lee, Layton, and their fellows would have ransacked the
very sewers of the monastery to find some charge against
the community, they brought forth no single word against
the purity of life in that cloister. Richard Roche was
succeeded as Prior by William Tynbygh or Tynbergh, an
Irishman born about 1450 (?), who held office till his
resignation in 1529. His life in early days had been, it
seems, adventurous.
We need not, after what has been written in an earlier
chapter, follow Maurice Chauncey too closely in his tale
of how Tynbygh as a young man on a pilgrimage to
Jerusalem was seized by Saracenic pirates, and being
cast for death one night, and praying vehemently to St.
Catharine, found himself next morning comfortably in
bed in his own home in Ireland without the intervention
of sea and land passage required of ordinary mundane
travellers. We turn with greater satisfaction to the fact
that at his death in 1531 the General Chapter of the
Grande Chartreuse made entry that he had worn the white
habit for sixty years " laudabiliter," a term, says Hendriks,
which means much when so recorded. Carthusian writers
are unanimous as to his high character, and his long
absence from the world does not seem to have reduced his
power of practical action as we shall presently see. When
he resigned, his place was filled by John Batmanson, who
had been Prior of Hinton. A man whose writings, fully
recorded, perhaps still existing, but long unread, had a
great fame of their kind in their own day. He even
ventured to cross swords with such a master of fence as
e
78 IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
Erasmus with regard to the opinions of the latter upon
Martin Luther. Erasmus seems to have lost patience,
and wrote an angry letter protesting against being called
upon to face one whom he scornfully described as an
ignorant madman. Of the merits of the dispute I know
nothing, but if Erasmus had, as is probable, an easy
conquest over such a swordsman, he might perhaps have
been more wisely content in merely disarming his foe.
Batmanson had but a short Priorate, and dying Nov. 16,
1531, gave place to the last and the greatest on the list,
John Houghton. At the time of his election he was Prior
of Beauvale, Nottinghamshire, to which office he had been
called from his cell in our monastery only six months
before. He was born about 1487 of an Essex family ;
had been at Cambridge — it is not known at what college —
and took a degree in Civil and in Canon Law. It is said
that his parents had other views for him than the cloister
life — a desirable marriage, and so forth. But being in his
own mind resolved upon the priesthood, he fled from his
home, and was presently ordained. Then after reconcilia-
tion with his parents, and several years spent in his home,
he once more went forth, and became a postulant in the
Great Cloister of our Charterhouse. He is believed to have
taken his " solemn vows " about the year 1516 at the age
of about twenty-nine. Seven years later he became
Sacristan. And after five years in this office he was called
upon to undertake the less welcome duties of Procurator
(Proctor) — a position, as already explained, akin to that of
steward or bursar. It is said that he little liked the
change, and that, as a rule, it is not an office looked forward
to by a Carthusian. One can understand that a very good
monk need not make a very good Proctor. In the Proctor's
hands were all the secular affairs of the monastery, its
rents, expenses, material work of every description. He
had the care of the Lay Brothers and Donati,the distribution
of their work in their obediences.
He alone, save the Prior, went outside the cloister,
into the city, his business requiring it. It was a return to
the world and to dealings with it in perhaps its least
PRIOR JOHN HOUGHTON 79
attractive form involving, in almost every transaction,
the commercial element. It is to many a monk almost
an adieu to what he holds dearest. Yet it must be said
that, judging by the mere prosperity which the Charter-
houses all over Europe have seldom failed to bring
around them, there have been few conspicuous failures
among the men who have been called to this duty. The
monk called from his beloved solitude to contact with the
outer world has not shown himself slothful in business.
In the three years during which John Houghton was
called upon to tread the streets of the Cheap and to make
his way through the fish mart by London Bridge, to see
the hay crop carried in the monk's wilderness, the apples
culled in the orchard behind the west wing of the cloister,
the fishpond near the stables re-stocked with " great
carps," the horses stalled in the monastery barns — all
these things, we are told, he did most capably, not forgetting
the devotion of Mary in the service of Martha. Then
came the short transference to the lovely country Priory
of the Fair Valley — Pulchra Vallis — Beauvale, in Notting-
hamshire. And then the call back to the London home,
and presently the end, which was to give him not merely
a great place in English history, but also that crown which
belongs to men of whatever faith who are ready to die for
their belief.
It was during these last three Priorates, William
Tynbygh, John Batmanson, John Houghton — extending
from 1500 to 1535 — that extensive changes were made,
and of the greatest interest in the fabric of the monastery,
and especially in the parts adjoining the church, the
Refectories, the Prior's cell, the Little Cloister, the Guest-
house, and the Lay Brothers' quarters and obediences.
Unhappily the documents which would enlighten us as to
the exact changes which were made, the dates of the
successive additions, and the exact positions of various
portions of the new buildings are not forthcoming,* and we
* I am far from unhopeful that documents may yet come to
light in the Record Office which will give details of the changes made
in the last thirty-five years of the monastery.
80 IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
are left to a process of inference and deduction which in
questions so complicated as these buildings — comparable
to a palimpsest many times over-written — is necessarily
unconvincing.
The reader who has had the opportunity of examining
the parchment plan of the water supply (see Chap. VII),
preserved in the Muniment Room, or, failing that, the
plan in this volume, will have been struck by the
fact that though all else is generalised save the actual
conduit, the church is represented with no small care.
And since the external appearance of the church is of no
value to the plumber's plan, a mere ground plan being as
useful, one feels that the draughtsman — probably an
inmate of the Great Cloister well used to illumination — has
felt reverent affection for the edifice, and expended his
best care upon it. The conviction fixes itself upon one
that though the drawing is not to scale, it may be safely
accepted as giving a faithful idea of the skyline and upper
portion of the church when seen from the Great Cloister
in the middle of the fifteenth century.
The first thing to notice is that the campanile appears
not as afterwards at the west end of the church, but halfway
along the roof ridge — that it is, moreover, a light structure,
a turret (probably of wood) supporting a slender fleche
(probably of wood covered with lead). The turret is
hexagonal with battlements, and merely supported,
apparently, as is usual in such a case, upon the roof beams
and rafters, and is obviously not a tower carried from
floor to roof. The fleche is surmounted by the ball and
cross with a flag-shaped vane. Here, then, we come to
the first important change in Tynbygh's day. Somewhere
about the year 1512 — for that is the date carved in the
lower chamber — the bell tower was moved to the west
end of the church and was carried up with great solidity
from the floor of the church to the summit with its great
bell and frame. The tower was in four stages on the
ground floor. There is a vaulted and groined chamber —
now used as the ante-chapel and baptistry. Above this is
a second chamber, also vaulted and groined, and with
PRIOR TYNBYGH'S CHANGES 81
the same bosses as the lower chamber, except that the
letters I.H.S. appear on the central boss. This chamber
was formerly approached by a narrow spiral staircase
(still existing) from the little open square, whose north
side bears the name of the Chapel Cloister. I am
strongly inclined to believe that this room (now our Muni-
ment Room) opened on the east side into the church, and
was used for the gallery for strangers. This view receives
encouragement from the fact that it was not entered from
the church but from the outside. The old entry has since
been blocked up and a new one made into the church
(chapel). The third chamber, above the Muniment Room,
is reached by the same staircase from outside. It is a
spacious room from which, however, in various subsequent
patchings all signs of antiquity have disappeared except
a stone fireplace of original work and date which has been
manifestly replaced among much later brickwork. Of
what character the " Lover," Louvre, or Fleche above
was, as placed there by Tynbygh, we have no means of
knowing.
Not less important was the change which took place
in the neighbourhood of the Refectory, involving the
pushing out towards the south of the Little Cloister with
its buildings. The reader will have realised that the first
monastery had been built not on one original comprehensive
plan, but a piece at a time, with often long intervals
between. And, as always happens in such cases, the
buildings seem to have been, in the south-west portion,
cramped and inconvenient. The old Freytor which appears
in the plan as a room with a gable end towards the cloister
garth, between cell A and cell B, must have been small
for its purpose. A new and larger Refectory was built
to the south of it, occupying almost the whole of the south
side of the Little Cloister (Master's Court), which was
then pushed out and enlarged till its south wing occupied
the position, approximately, at any rate, in which we now
see it. And at the same time the Prior's cell seems to have
been moved from its old position behind the Freytor and
cell A (which now disappeared) to a position believed to
82 IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
be represented by the large bare chamber * with
columns which gives access from Master's Court to Chapel
Cloister.
With regard to the new Refectory, which afterwards
became the Banquet Hall of Howard House — known in
hospital days as Great Hall or Pensioners' Hall — it has
become the custom in late years to regard it as the Guesten
Hall. I am unable to trace this belief to any authority
earlier than the last forty years or so. I do not share the
belief. It appears to me far more probable that it was the
Refectory of the monks, and when we remember that at
the time of the suppression there were over thirty monks
in residence, and that Carthusian monks coming to London
from other convents were housed and fed with the Fathers,
the room would be not too large, not nearly so large as
many Carthusian Refectories abroad. On the other hand,
I never remember to have seen so large a chamber set
apart for ordinary guests, who, with the accommodation
obtainable in the town of London itself, could never have
been so numerous at any one time as to need this great
space. I should rather expect to find, as is so often the
case, that they had their meals in an upper chamber of
the Guesthouse in the Little Cloister. I think it also
probable that the old Freytor, now the Brothers' Library,
became, after the creation of the new Freytor or Refectory,
the Refectory of the Lay Brothers. It is, as has been
mentioned in the chapter on Carthusian life, quite an usual
thing in large Charterhouses for the Lay Brothers to have
a separate Refectory, and in some cases (e.g. the Grande
Chartreuse) even to live at some distance from the main
house. In no case do they take meals in the same room
with the Fathers unless there is a partition to separate
them.
The enlargement of the Little Cloister affected the
obediences and quarters of the Lay Brothers which appear
to have been entirely rebuilt at this period. One fragment
* I am myself inclined to believe that the later Priors' quarters
are represented by the first-floor rooms of the Preachers' House
(1913), which has a spiral staircase from the lower floor of the date
required.
WASHHOUSE COURT 83
of these buildings, surrounding the picturesque little court
known as Washhouse Court, remains to us, and in spite
of much cruel though well-meant usage at the hands of
successive officials, retains a good deal of its ancient
character. The little court contained, on the ground floor,
the washhouse [removed hither at this period from the
position in the Great Cloister east of the Chapterhouse],
a long workshop (still so used), the monastery bakehouse,
and the kitchen and larders. It is found in Barker's
Confession,* under the name of the Lavendry [Laundry]
Court. In a plan about 1614 after Sutton's purchase it is
called the Kitchen Court. In the eighteenth century it
bore for a time the name of the Poplar Court from a fine
tree which grew in the middle, and for a long time past it
has returned to its older name as Washhouse Court. It
represents but a very small portion of the obediences and
offices which at the end of the monastery days extended
in a long line of buildings continued from the west wing
of the court far down into what is now Preachers' Court.
Between that line of buildings and the back wall of the
west wing of the Great Cloister lay the orchard which in
the mansion days became the Privie Garden, and now
carries the buildings of the east wing of Preachers' Court.
Of the buildings which remain to us in Washhouse
Court the portions on the south, west, and north, and the
lower portion at least of the east side, are of the late
monastery date, 1500-1535. But it is extremely difficult
to assign any given portion of the work specifically to any
one of the three last Priors. The east wing is wholly of
stone, with some layers of red tile inserted. And so, too,
the south side, which again has some very picturesque
additions in red brick of a later date. The west wing
appears to have been begun at its south end in stone,
which, however, ends abruptly 12 feet from the south
wall, and thenceforth is red brickwork (old English bond),
the bricks being of hard quality and shallow. Mr. Basil
Champness, in his valuable paper in the Architectural
Review (1891-92), says that it will be safe to attribute
* See William Cecil, State Papers, London, 1759.
84 IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
all the stonework to Tynbygh, and all the brickwork to
Houghton. I confess to a doubt as to whether we can
make a cleavage so distinct and especially that particular
cleavage ; and I very much incline to the belief that all
the changes in the monastery were practically complete
by the end of Tynbygh's priorate (1529). It must be
remembered that so early as 1512 Tynbygh had gone far
into his work. He had already completed the alterations
to the church. Assuming that that would have been the
first work which he would have desired to see completed,
there were still left seventeen years of his priorate, a period
long enough to account for all the buildings of the recon-
structed monastery. The shifting of the buildings of
the Little Cloister, moreover, which must have taken
place at the same time as the building of the New
Refectory (Great Hall), would, it is natural to suppose,
have been the next work to be undertaken after the com-
pletion of the church. And it involved, from the change
in the ground plan, the destruction of the old Lay Brothers'
quarters. It does not seem likely that the monastery
would have been left so long as nineteen years (Houghton
became Prior in 1531) without its all-important obediences.
The fact that Maurice Chauncy, who took the habit in
the first year of Houghton's priorate, in his description of
his beloved leader's government, makes no mention of
any changes made by Houghton must, of course, not be
pressed too far, since Chauncy's thoughts were wholly
absorbed in the spiritual and moral aspect of the man and
his actions. On the other hand, there is a piece of evidence
which is often called in in favour of Houghton's share in
Washhouse Court buildings which can hardly be accepted.
On the west front of the brick buildings one reads the
letters I.H. worked in darker brick. The letters are some
3 feet long, and have been interpreted as John Houghton.
I do not know if I shall carry my readers with me when
in a merely antiquarian question I appeal simply to
character in dissent from such a view. I cannot, indeed,
believe that any Carthusian Prior in carryng out any
work for the good of his monastery would have glorified
WASHHOUSE COURT 85
himself by a somewhat flaunting display of his own initials.
Least of all do I think it possible in the case of John
Houghton, of whom Maurice Chauncy writes that " He
dreaded nothing so much as to be known." I interpret
the inscription as I.H.S., of which the S has been allowed
to disappear — the kind of negligence, alas ! which has been
too frequent in our history — under some repair of the
brickwork. It will be noticed that a cross, in black brick,
which has lost its upper portion is visible just under the
spot where the S would have been. And this is a few feet
to the left, though a good deal above it, of the bricked-up
hatch at which we believe the monastery dole to have
been handed out to the poor. I surmise that it is likely
that a shrine or " station " of some kind may have
existed here, below the sacred letters I.H.S., at which the
receivers of the dole could kneel in thanks before they
departed. And if this view be correct then one must not
appeal to the letters I.H. in proof that that portion of the
brickwork was due to the last Prior of Charterhouse.
Be this how it may, the brickwork of the Washhouse
Court can be definitely placed within the limits of 1500
and 1534, and it is conceivable that the discovery of
further documents may enable us to give it a much narrower
limit. To this same period belongs the brick arch which
spans the narrow carriage road leading from the entrance
court to the Preachers' Court.* This gave access to the
monastery barns and outhouses which lay approximately
along the line occupied to-day by the west wings of
Preachers' Court and Pensioners' Court. It is natural to
suppose that here also some alterations may have taken
place at this period, but we have no information. It is,
however, a suggestive fact that a hundred years later, at
the time of the sale to Thomas Sutton (1611), these buildings
were in such fine and serviceable condition that when
upper floors had been inserted and staircases, chimneys,
* In 1910 the present master caused holes to be made in the
ground where the carriage road broadens out into Preachers' Court,
on the left some 40 feet from the west face of Washhouse Court.
At a depth of 2 feet 6 inches a brick pavement was reached, evidently
the flooring of one of the outhouses or barns.
86 IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
and doorways added, they became the dwellings of the
Brothers of the Hospital and remained so till they were
replaced (1824-41) by the present buildings. In short,
whatever difficulties we encounter in assigning specific
dates to given portions of our buildings, we can come to
but one conclusion on the main point, namely, that at the
moment of its dissolution the monastery had been brought
to a condition so complete, with its halls, its guesthouses,
its ready-made offices for a retinue of servitors, its garden
and orchard, its kitchen garden and pleasances, its water
supply, and boundary wall, that it needed but the insertion
of a luxurious dwelling-house upon the ground plan and
walls of the buildings of the Little Cloister, to make it
what it was presently to become, a princely Tudor Mansion.
CHAPTER IX
THE SUPPRESSION
THE last chapter showed us the monastery about the year
1529, at the height of its material prosperity, and with its
fabric made ready for the new lease of life which seemed to
await it. There could have been no man then alive, not
even Thomas Cromwell, who could have foreseen the shape
which Destiny had prepared for it before that century
should have passed.
And its reputation at the end of its days was even
greater than its prosperity. We have several times noted
the fact that in the history of the Carthusian Order in
England no stain of ill morals or disordered life mars the
record. And in view of the methods used and the character
of the men employed to gather evidence, the absence of
such charges against the Order becomes not merely negative
evidence, but positive. It is, therefore, deeply to be
lamented that one writer, the fascination of whose style
alone will give his history permanent place, should have
so far forgotten his duty as a historian as to bring, by
implication, a sweeping charge against the Order which
very ordinary precaution should have made impossible.
Mr. Froude, summing up the case against the monastic
orders at large, claims a strong argument in " the iniquities
of the monastery of Sion." He says, " The order was
Carthusian — one of the strictest in England. There were
two houses attached to the establishment — one of monks
the other of nuns." * And he proceeds to detail and to
* I quote the index reference from Longmans, Green & Co.'s
edition, 1900. The reference is to vol. ii. p. 316 of that edition.
87
88 THE SUPPRESSION
condemnation, none too strong indeed if the details
gathered by Dr. Layton and his comrades, and quoted by
Froude, carry confidence. It is, indeed, no part of my task
to ask the reader to appraise the value of the evidence in
any given instance where these men were the agents. But
it is no question here of evidence. Mr. Froude, before he
wrote almost the most drastic indictment in his book,
should have known — it is very easy to do so — that Sion
was not a Carthusian house, but of the Brigittine Order,
an Augustinian branch. This grave default is the more
deplorable — as also the charge seems more damaging —
since the historian is, save for some picturesque inaccuracies,
fair and sympathetic towards the monks of our London
Charterhouse in the hour, presently to come, of their fiery
trial.
But in the year 1529, when perhaps the buildings of the
enlarged monastery were completed, no whisper of coming
trouble had passed into the quiet precincts of our Great
Cloister. Court gossip and other politics have no great
currency in the quiet cells whose motto is " Silentium."
Henry might be for marrying whom he would. They
might, if they knew it, like it or mislike it. They might
wonder, and shrug the shoulder, and remember that that
was how things got done in the outer world when they were
in it. But how could it concern or come near them in the
place where all outer things were forgotten ? So, indeed,
they were presently to plead. But as yet the web had not
begun to be woven that was to ensnare them.
But in that same year came the ruin of Wolsey, and
England heard that the fallen minister was to be prosecuted
under the Act of Praemunire,* whose clauses stringently
forbade the referring of any cause whatever to any foreign
potentate — the Pope being, of course, included. It
extended to any person who should accept any office or
dignity in the Anglican Church by presentation from the
Pope. And Wolsey, in accepting the position of Papal
Legate, had violated the statute. It is hard to say if he
* The Act had been passed and re-passed in the reign of Edward I,
Edward III, Richard II, Henry IV.
THE SUPPRESSION 89
had done it knowingly, or if he regarded the statute as
dormant or obsolete. But there can be no doubt that in
any case he relied on the King's permission which had been
given. The statute made provision that if the King himself
lent himself to a violation of it by a subject he was also
guilty of praemunire. And the irony of the case was that
Henry was now guilty himself under the statute, and was
prosecuting the subject whom he had unwittingly lured to
his crime. But Wolsey's personality was not sufficiently
dear to his countrymen to earn from them, in the hour of
his fall, the sympathy and claim to justice which a sense of
humour, if nothing else, might have produced, in circum-
stances so incongruous ! When once the great cardinal
stood condemned it became possible to the policy of Henry
and Thomas Cromwell to paralyse the opposition of the
clergy by an unexpected blow. A year later (Dec. 1530) it
was announced that the whole of the clergy of England had
come within the statute by accepting Wolsey as Legate — a
thing which to the majority had been no doubt distasteful.
The King proposed to pardon them, merely inflicting on
the two ecclesiastical provinces a fine of 118,000 pounds —
probably about a year's income per head. But to this
pardon there was tacked the condition that they should
acknowledge the King as the only Supreme Head of the
Church. We need not follow the unhappy men through
the long debates in convocation up to the memorable day
in Feb., 1531, when the broken-hearted Warham read
out the clause with the words added, " Quantum per legem
Christi licet," and the measure passed which was to bear
such fruit in England.
The secular clergy had been, indeed, pardoned and
paralysed, but as yet no step was taken against the Re-
ligious Orders. In Jan., 1533, came the marriage with
Anne Boleyn. In the summer of that year, if Humphrey
Middlemore, the Procurator, going about the business of the
convent, happened to pass the end of Grassechurche Street
he must have seen the making of the Great Triumphal Arch
which Hans Holbein set up for his fellow-Germans of the
steelyard, that Queen Anne Boleyn might presently pass
90 THE SUPPRESSION
under on her way from the Tower to her Coronation,
" Sitting in her hair " — as Cranmer wrote — beneath her
canopy of gold with silver bells, drawn by white horses
draped in white and gold. It was the sign, if he could have
read it, of a day soon coming when he himself should pass
that way from Tower to Tyburn.
For in the early months of 1534 the Act of Succession
was passed which declared Catherine of Aragon to have
been no wife, and the children of Anne Boleyn to be the
true heirs to the throne. And the Act provided that any
person suspected of hostility to the Divorce could be called
on to assent by oath to the said Act. It was not till April
in that year that the commissioners., Dr. Roland Lee, Bishop
of Lichfield, and Thomas Bedyll, Archdeacon of London,*
appeared at Charterhouse to put the question to Prior
John Houghton. He answered simply that he and the
Fathers did not meddle with such matters, and that it was
not their concern whom the King should marry or not, so
that they were not asked for an opinion. The answer
availed not. The commissioners insisted on meeting the
monks assembled in the Chapterhouse. Here once more
the question was put, and an unequivocal answer demanded.
The Prior, therefore, in presence of his monks replied that
he could not understand how a marriage celebrated accord-
ing to the rites of the Church, and so long observed, could
be made void. That night the Prior and Procurator were
not in their cells, but found cold harbour within the Tower.
They lay there for a month, during which time there were
sent to them Stokesley, Bishop of London, and Lee, Arch-
bishop of York — not to be confused with Roland Lee of evil
memory — who at length persuaded the Carthusians that the
question was not one on which they were justified in
sacrificing the lives of themselves and of all within their
convent. Unwillingly the two men consented, and that
day they were once more walking through the familiar
streets back to their beloved cells. It is not made plain
in Chauncy's account when they met the Fathers in Chapter,
but he describes how the Prior addressed them telling them
* The reader is referred to the D.N.B. for the lives of these men.
THE SUPPRESSION 91
that their hour had not yet come, and how he had dreamed
on the night of his liberation that in a year's time he should
be carried back to that same prison there to end his course.
And how, though faith must not be given to dreams, he
foresaw that further trial lay before them. It is evident
from Chauncy's words that the commissioners had already
" returned empty-handed, having come to tender the oath."
But at their third visit on May 24, 1534, Houghton setting
the example, the monks signed their allegiance to the Act of
Succession, " so far as it was lawful," and for the moment
the danger was averted.
But the clouds returned in the autumn. In Nov.
1534, the Act of Supremacy was passed, declaring the King
to be the only Supreme Head of the Church, and making it
high treason to deny the claim, and in the spring of 1535 it
was further enacted and proclaimed that any suspected
person might be required to assent by oath to the Act.
The fulfilment of the Prior's forecast was in full view.
Calling together the Chapter he made known to them what
case they were in. To realise the true position of these
men, innocent of disloyal intent, we need to remember
that for knowledge of events outside they were dependent
on this one source of information, namely, the address of
the Prior to them in Chapter — and never would the address
touch upon external matters save in a case such as this
unique in their history — where a religious question was
involved. The London monks, moreover, were more
strictly secluded from the outer world, it would seem, than
any other Carthusians. The prohibition set by the visitors
in 1405,* whereby the monks lost the privilege of the
weekly walk " spatiamentum," and were not allowed " on
any pretext " to go beyond the cloister, was, it would appear,
never relaxed. For Chauncy says expressly that up to the
time of the great trouble — that is the period of dissolution —
the Fathers had not gone beyond the enclosure. And he
says in another passage, describing the convent life, that
when Seculars came to stay in the convent, " The Brothers,
i.e. lay brothers, were accustomed on the first arrival of any
* See Chap. V, p. 01,
92 THE SUPPRESSION
visitor and on receiving the salutation of Seculars to request
them not to acquaint the Brothers with any rumours or
with what was going on in the world." The little band of
men who met that day in the Chapterhouse to hear the
Prior's announcement, were, in the main, as ignorant of
outside polemics as they were innocent of all wish to share
them. To challenge such men on suspicion of an opinion
which they held, or were thought to hold, was to create
a treason where none had before existed.
At this point we find our chief authority for much which
happened inside the monastery in the well-known record
of Dom Maurice Chauncy, a professed monk of Charterhouse.
He was a Hertfordshire man, born about 1513, and after
Oxford and Gray's Inn he became a postulant, and took the
final vows in the last year of John Houghton's Priorate,
1534. He was, as will presently be seen, one of the firmest
of the monks after Houghton's death in resisting all the
efforts which were made to get the remaining monks to
sign the oath of the Supremacy. He was, indeed, so
marked a dissentient that he was one of the four selected
for removal, and was sent to Beauvale, whence he presently
returned in no more concessive mood. But, eventually, a
good deal through the influence of the Brigittine Monks of
Sion, he gave way and signed. This act tinged the whole
of the rest of his life with deep remorse — a remorse which
makes itself felt through all the pages of his narrative. At
the expulsion of the monks in 1538 Maurice Chauncy was
one of those who passed out of the gates with a pension — it
is doubtful if he ever touched it — and he, with one lay
brother, reached Bruges, where he was received into the
Chartreuse of Val de Grace, and he remained there sixteen
years till the Coronation of Queen Mary, when he returned
to England, and was presently made Prior of the reopened
Charterhouse of Sheen. At Mary's death he had once more
to retire to Val de Grace,* of Bruges, where two years later
he became Prior ; but presently, as the House became more
* This monastery has disappeared. A street behind the Halles
retains the name of " La Rue des Chartreux," and the Museum des
Hospices occupies the site.
MAURICE CHAUNCY 93
crowded, he was allowed to create a separate House in
Bruges, which obtained the name of Sheen Anglorum.
But here again the rest was to be broken. In 1578 the
monks of Sheen Anglorum were expelled from Bruges with
those of other orders, and took refuge at Louvain. Maurice
Chauncy, still Prior of the almost homeless little band, as a
last resource travelled to Spain to seek the aid of Philip II,
with what success is not known, for whatever message of
hope or disappointment he carried with him never reached
his brethren. He died on the way home at the Chartreuse
of Paris [July 12, 1581] at the age of sixty-eight.
The record is said, in the Introduction to the latest
edition,* to have been written about 1539. But this can
hardly be the case, since in one of the latest chapters the
writer speaks of the convent having passed to the possession
of Lord North a year and a half before. Since Lord North
(then Sir Edward) obtained his letters from Henry, on
April 14, 1545, and, taking Maurice Chauncy's words to the
letter, his record cannot have been written earlier than the
last months of 1546.
Allowing for the presence of much which is miraculous
and visionary in character, and which will be accepted or
rejected, or explained, according to the temperament of
the reader, there remains a perfectly simple and obviously
truthful narrative of historical events as he saw them and
took part in them. Wherever the account can be compared
with outside contemporary records of the day, or with the
evidence of legal documents, Chauncy's narrative shows
discrepancies so slight as to be of no importance. Froude,
indeed, challenges one important statement with reference
to Cromwell's action at the trial of John Houghton, but
hardly comes off victorious. It is, however, for the actual
course of events within the cloister that we are able to
accept Chauncy's pages as a perfectly trustworthy guide.
No document more touching, more truly pathetic, exists
in the English language than this simple record of the way
in which eighteen Englishmen faced a fate which they could
* An English translation was published by Burnes and Gates,
1890.
94 THE SUPPRESSION
have averted — as many did avert it — by a stroke of the
pen. Opinions on the general question of the Reformation
in England, and of an infinite number of points and
incidents which arose within it and out of it are almost as
diverse to-day as they were in that century. On one point
there can be no two opinions amongst honest men of
whatever colour of religious thought — namely, that these
brave English gentlemen, who preferred to die rather than
to give their conscience the lie, are rightly called by men of
all faiths or of none by the name of Martyrs.
To return, however, to the gathering of the Fathers to
hear the message which their Prior had for them. Chauncy
preserves for us, if not the exact words, the substance of the
Prior's address. After explaining to them what was impend-
ing, to their great consternation he told them that his chief
grief was for the younger brethren, who being sent out into
the world again might learn its evil lesson and go back to
the flesh. Then he spoke of his own debt to God if he
should thence lose any of the souls entrusted to him. With
one voice they cried that they would rather die in their
simplicity. The Prior resumed —
" Would it might be so that one death may make us
alive whom one life hath brought to death, but I do not
believe they intend so great a good for us or to do them-
selves so much harm. Many of you are from a noble race.
This rather, I think, they will do. They will deliver you
elder ones and me to death and let the younger ones go
where they will, into a land not their own. Wherefore, if
my consent be alone required, I will throw myself on the
mercy of God, and be anathema for these my least brethren
and consent to the King's will, ' si licite fieri possit,' in order
to preserve them from so many and such great future
dangers. If, however, they shall decree that all shall
consent, and if the death of one (that the whole people
perish not) shall not suffice, then, may the will of God be
done, and I would wish it might be by the equal sacrifice
of us all."
Then John Houghton bid them choose each a confessor
whom he would, and the next morning he proposed to them
THE MONKS AND CROMWELL 95
a day of solemn reconciliation, which having come " he
preached a sermon on charity, patience, and firm adhesion to
God in adversity, treating those five verses of the Psalm(lx.),
' O God, Thou hast cast us out and destroyed us.' ' Then,
asking the Fathers and Brothers to do what they saw him
do, he knelt before each in turn, passing from the choir of
the Fathers to that of the Lay Brothers, and from each of
them down to the last Lay Brother he asked forgiveness if
at any time he had done aught against him in thought or
word or deed. Each Father and each Brother did the same.
And so at peace with one another and with God these brave
men waited quietly for the end.
It was not far away. And it was brought nearer by the
simple-minded act of the Carthusians themselves. For it
happened that at this time there came to London Prior
Robert Lawrence, of Beauvale, once a monk of our cloister,
who had come on a visit of affection, and Prior Augustine
Webster, of Axholme, once a monk of Shene, on the business
of his House. Both, naturally, were lodged in our
monastery, and their visit was destined to prove fateful.
For the three Priors in all simplicity of heart only, conscious
of their loyalty to their King, and doubtless convinced of
the reasonableness of their own position, conceived that
if they should have audience of Thomas Cromwell and lay
their case before him they might obtain some easement
that should spare them violation of their conscience without
loss of loyalty to Henry. They little knew their man.
It was the very step that placed them in his power. As
yet the oath had not been technically demanded of
them — though the demand was, of course, to come.
The three Priors, one Tuesday in April, 1535 — it appears
to have been April 13 — Chauncy tells us, laid their
case before Cromwell, who not only denied their petition,
but ordered them to be sent to the Tower as rebels. In
* It is not the Carthusian custom to deliver sermons in the
church, but in the Chapterhouse, but the expression that the Prior
went through his own choir and then to the other choir, i.e. the lay
brothers' portion, suggests that this touching scene took place in the
church which (see Chap. VI) was divided by the usual screen into
two portions.
96 THE SUPPRESSION
the Tower, Cromwell, with his commissioners, visited
Houghton and questioned them with no fresh result. A
fourth recusant, Father Richard Reynolds, a Brigittine
Monk of Sion, said by Cardinal Pole to have been the most
learned monk in England, had meanwhile been sent to the
Tower. It was upon the answers given by the four men
to the interrogatories in the Tower that their indictment
was finally laid.
The three Carthusian Priors and Father Reynolds were
taken to Westminster on April 29 and charged that they,
" treacherously machinating and desiring to deprive the
King of his title as Supreme Head of the Church, did on
April 26 (27 Henry VIII) at the Tower of London openly
declare and say "the King our Sovereign Lord is not
supreme head on earth of the Church of England."
Having been once more asked if they would submit, and
declining to do aught which was contrary to the law of
God, they were committed for trial and the jury was
returned. Next day, April 29, the trial continued, and the
verdict was returned. It seems that the three Carthusians
said little or nothing. Reynolds, who had also intended
to keep silence, in answer to a direct question from Sir
Thomas Audley, spoke clearly and boldly. But speech or
silence were to be of equal avail. The jury, according to
Chauncy, on the first day were unwilling to convict, since
they could find no malice. He states that Cromwell,
having learnt of their disposition, sent a messenger twice
over with threats which had the required effect. Froude
sets this statement aside on the double ground that the
jury was empanelled on the 29th, and the verdict given
that same day — here the record is against him — and also
that the conduct attributed to Cromwell is foreign to his
character. The latter plea is hardly convincing, or perhaps
convincing on reflection, in the very opposite direction.
But, however arrived at, the verdict was Guilty and the
sentence Death. Five days later the people of London
saw a sight till then unseen. The three Carthusians in
their white habits, with Reynolds the Brigittine, were
" drawn " on hurdles through the city and out to Tyburn,
TYBURN 97
and there, with circumstances of ghastly cruelty — ghastly
even in those brutal days — were hanged and quartered
(while still alive, it is said), the first who ever suffered in
England in the robe of a religious order. The London
populace, used to seeing any day, or every day, some few
of their kind gasp out their lives on those gallows for this
crime or for that, or for none at all, were not, it may be
supposed, easily moved to sympathy. But this time there
ran strange rumours among the mob, and strange murmurs
for a time, which showed that for once they were deeply
stirred. It was said that Henry himself had been one of
the masked horsemen of high degree who had watched the
scene, and in the long and deadly drought which fell upon
the crops that summer it became a common saying that it
had not rained ever since the Carthusians died.
The day after the execution of John Houghton his
parboiled limbs, after the hideous fashion of the day, were
sent hither and thither to the usual spots within the city,
while " to the gate of our House " was affixed one arm of
the dead Prior. Chauncy tells how, on the third day, as
" two of ours " — lay brothers, for such they must have
been — met beneath the gate the poor limb fell from its
place, and having been reverently placed within a chest,
together with the shirt in which the Prior had died, was
buried in a secret subterranean place " until God should
bring back the congregation and have pity on us." The
fate of the chest — whether it was removed, or whether it
has since been found and not recognised, or whether it still
remains somewhere beneath our soil, is unknown. A
portion of the shirt together with the account, written in
Houghton's own hand, after his sentence, of all the questions
that had been put to him, and of his answers to them, passed
through Chauncy's keeping and were sent by the hand of
a Spanish gentleman, Peter Barin, to the Pope, Paul III.
Cromwell had chosen his policy. He had burnt his
ships. Henceforth there was no return. It is probable,
indeed, that the act of the Carthusians, Godsend as it was
to him, had yet been so unexpected that it led to a speedier
development of his plans than he had been able to foresee.
98 THE SUPPRESSION
Before the middle of July John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester,
and Sir Thomas More had died on Tower Hill by a less
cruel death than John Houghton, but on the same charge.
But, before that, three more monks of the convent had
suffered the same fate as their Prior. These were
Humphrey Middlemore, formerly Procurator under
Houghton, and recently Vicar, William Exmew, Procurator
in succession to Middlemore — these two being, of course,
the most important officers left in the convent — while to
them was added a choir monk, Sebastian Newdigate,* the
reason of whose selection is not at first apparent. He was a
man of good family, once well known in Town society and
at Court, a playmate and friend of Henry's youth. Perhaps
it was for that very reason that he was chosen, that it
might be seen that no bond of friendship or of favour was
now to avail. It was believed at the time — it is, indeed,
recorded as a fact by Father George Transom (d. 1658) —
that when the three men were in the Marshalsea, where they
were chained upright to columns, Sebastian Newdigate
was visited by Henry in disguise in the vain hope of
persuading him to change his resolution. But neither King
nor Commissioner effected anything. The three men at
their trial at Westminster bore themselves fearlessly and
met their death as fearlessly, when it came to them at
Tyburn, on June 19, a few days only before the execution
of John Fisher.
* Other accounts make this visit to have taken place while
Sebastian was still in his cell at Charterhouse.
CHAPTER X
THE LAST YEARS OF THE MONASTERY
JOHN HOUGHTON died on May 4, 1535. It took two
whole years and some odd days from that time before
Thomas Cromwell obtained even a partial submission to
the Act of Supremacy from the remaining monks. The
history of those two years in Charterhouse makes sorry
reading. As one follows the system of petty tyrannies,
of mean traps, of unworthy pressure by which the monks
were day by day distressed, one has to ask why Cromwell
suddenly, after the double scene at Tyburn, abandoned
the policy of violence to which he had seemed committed,
and for a time adopted these less drastic methods. The
answer is easy. He had everything to gain for his policy
if he could obtain his end by a submission which might be
made to seem voluntary without risking the temper of
the populace by further executions, and lighting in London
the hidden fire which he knew to be burning in Yorkshire
and the North, presently to burst into a flame which
threatened to consume those men who had heated the
furnace. And so for two whole years every method was
tried upon the convent. Three men, Bedyll, John Whalley,
Jasper Fyloll, were now to be used as the chief agents for
the reduction of the stronghold. Of these Whalley
became the first resident commissioner, being quartered
doubtless in the guesthouse. They were, perhaps, some
degrees less base of character than such men as Bishop
Roland Lee, London, and Layton, who were doing Crom-
well's work in other parts of England. Also they were
less effective. Thomas Bedyll — Archdeacon of Cornwall,
99
100 THE LAST YEARS OF THE MONASTERY
which he probably never saw — one of the Royal Chaplains
and the possessor of benefices which occupy a long para-
graph in the Dictionary of National Biography, had done
yeoman's service in the matter of the divorce, and had
received his reward. He was sent to Charterhouse on the
very day of Houghton's death, and it was on his report
of their obstinacy that Middlemore, Exmew, and Newdigate
perished. Jaspar Fyloll, one of Cromwell's servants, was
set rather to make report on and find material out of the
domestic affairs of the monastery. In a letter written to
Cromwell, on the 5th of that September, after giving some
details of finance, and adding interesting statements as to
the doles of bread and ale and fish given to strangers at the
buttery door, he adds : " These Charterhouse monks
would be called solitary, but to the cloister door there be
above twenty-four keys in the hands of twenty-four
persons, and it is likely that many letters, unprofitable
tales and tidings, and sometimes perverse counsel come
and go by reason thereof. Also to the buttery door there
be twelve sundry keys in twelve men's hands wherein
seems to be small husbandry." The passage is worth
quoting, since it is the nearest approach which Cromwell
ever obtained from his commissioners to a charge of
doubtful living in the convent of Charterhouse. It need
only be said — as Dom Hendriks points out — that the
twenty-four keys were the keys of each monk's cell — there
were twenty-four in the Great Cloister — and not of the
door giving access to the monastery, while the twelve keys
of the buttery were the keys in the hands of the twelve
lay brothers whose duty it was to carry the daily pittance
from the buttery to the hatches of the cells in the Great
Cloister. Certainly Jaspar Fyloll had not that rich scent
for carrion which London and his comrades possessed.
To the letter Fyloll added a list of the monks under the
letters of the cells which they inhabited, giving his estimate
of the men — with reference, of course, to the likelihood
of their submitting — with the letters g and b for " good "
and " bad." The list is unhappily lost, but the letter
survives in the British Museum.
THE LAST YEARS 101
We need not follow too closely, in all the pitiful details,
the course of treatment which now followed. Cromwell
presently reinforced Whalley and Fyloll, and supplied six
resident governors — " temporal persons," of whom three
were to be always within the convent day and night.
These governors carried out the orders of Cromwell, the
suggestions of Fyloll, and more of their own. The monks,
who had already been plied with quite a company of
preachers, whose names we know, had now to receive a
resident preacher, " the said preachers to have their
chambers there," who four times a week endeavoured to
turn them. Once, indeed, four of the monks were taken
out of the choir during service and carried to St. Paul's
Cross for a like purpose. The commissioners were present
at meetings of the chapter. The books of the monks —
the statutes of Bruno are specially mentioned — were taken
from them. It is now that the fine library of the monastery
disappears from knowledge. They were supplied each in
his cell with a copy of a book called " The Way of Peace,"
which each monk, save one, forthwith returned unread.
John Rochester retained his copy for five days, at the end
of which time he " burnt him." At the ears and the eyes
of the monks the commissioners found no entrance. Nor
did they fare better with their mouths. The refectory
arrangements were altered — four messing at each of the
six tables. The lay brother cooks were removed from
office, and cooks from outside were sent in, who doubtless
cooked flesh meat for the *' Governors " in the guesthouse.
Endeavour was made to get the monks and the lay brothers
to eat meat. It failed in both instances, though flesh was
served both in guesthouse and freytor.* Short commons,
with brief intervals of plenty, also failed. Everything
failed. Then early in 1536 Cromwell appointed a Prior of
his own choice — there had been none since May 4 of the
previous year — William Trafford, late a monk of Beauvale,
who in the Nottinghamshire Charterhouse had shown the
boldest face in resisting the Act of Supremacy. It has
never been known by what means he was won over, but
* Spelt " fraytowr " in Fyloll's recommendations.
102 THE LAST YEARS OF THE MONASTERY
now in London he set about his task of convincing his
brethren with no small confidence. He also was, for
a while, doomed to failure. The policy of Cromwell in
endeavouring to disintegrate the community by getting
them to adopt changes in their rule which would have
violated their conscience and destroyed their self-respect
and the respect of others, was once more to be disappointed.
On May 4, 1536, the experiment was tried of sending four
of the most stiff-necked away to the North. John Rochester
and James Walworth were sent to the Charterhouse of
Hull. In May, 1537, these two men were condemned to
death at York by the third Duke of Norfolk and were
there hung in chains. The charge against them was not,
as is often said, a direct sharing in the " Pilgrimage of
Grace." The " true bill " against them makes it clear
that they died for having " hidden traitors and rebels in
the monastery of Our Lady by Hull," and that they had
" traitorously and maliciously affirmed that the aforesaid
Lord the King was not now Supreme Head on earth of the
Church of England."
John Fox and Maurice Chauncy were sent to the
Charterhouse of Beauvale, and returned presently to
London.
After the departure of these four monks to the North
a full year was yet to pass without effect. Meanwhile
eight more monks were sent for a season to Sion to come
within the influence of the dying Father Pewterer, who
once had counselled Houghton to go forward to his end,
and now was counselling the Carthusians to yield. They
returned to Charterhouse and once more refused the oath.
Yet the advice of a dying man, whose name had been
held in such honour by them, no doubt had weakened their
will. Be that how it may, on May 18 of that year, 1537,
two years and a fortnight after Houghton had died, twenty
of the Carthusians at length signed the oath. Of these,
William Trafford was one. There were nine choir monks
— all of whom had been under Houghton — and four lay
brothers. The remainder were apparently monks from
other Charterhouses dwelling in the convent. Ten men,
THE END OP THE MONASTERY 103
of whom four were monks and six were conversi (lay
brothers), still refused to sign. The twenty were allowed
to remain in Charterhouse ; the ten were, on May 29,
thrown into Newgate.
The fate of these men was more piteous than that of
those who had died at Tyburn or at York. They were
to perish unseen, all save one. For it was still of Cromwell's
policy not to make open spectacle in London of the con-
stancy of the Carthusians. They were chained upright to
columns in one of the dungeons of Newgate — the prisons
of those days need no pourtraying — to die slowly in filth
and starvation. They never thought of yielding any more
than Cromwell and Bedyll thought of pitying. One bright
light shines out of that darkness. It is recorded that
Margaret Clements, the adopted daughter of Sir Thomas
More, with the connivance of the gaolers — not difficult to
buy in those days — visited the prison disguised as a milk-
maid and there, with womanly kindness, brought sustenance
to their lips, and did for the dying men such helpful acts
as woman can. They lived, perhaps through her means,
some six weeks longer than one would have expected, but
perished in the heat of June. Let Thomas Bedyll be his
own recorder. Here is the extract from his letter to
Cromwell, June 14, 1537 : —
" My very good Lord. After my most hearty commen-
dations it shall please your Lordship to understand that
the monks of the Charterhouse here in London which were
committed to Newgate for their traitorous behaviour
long time continued against the King's grace, be almost
despatched by the hand of God, as it may appear to you
by the bill inclosed. Whereof considering their behaviour
and the whole matter I am not sorry, but would that all
such as love not the King's highness and his worldly honour
were in like case."
So wrote Thomas Bedyll, the King's Chaplain, Cromwell's
secretary, while the ten men lay dead or dying, despatched,
or to be despatched, " by the hand of God." One prefers
to make no comment. To the list which he attaches to
104 THE LAST YEARS OF THE MONASTERY
his letter I have added the dates at which the various
men perished one by one.
" There be departed
Brother William Greenwood (d. June 6).
Dom John Davy (d. June 8).
Brother Robert Salt (d. June 9).
Brother Walter Person (d. June 10).
Dom Thomas Green (d. June 10).
" There be even at the point of death
Brother Thomas Scriven (d. June 15).
Brother Thomas Reding (d. June 16).
" There be sick
Dom Thomas Johnson (d. Sept. 20).
Brother William Horn (recovered ; executed at
Tyburn, 1540).
" One is whole. Dom Beer (d. Aug. 9)."
It will be seen that Beer died while Horn recovered,
and was presently transferred to the Tower, whence, three
years later, on August 4, 1540, he was carried to Tyburn
and executed there.
William Trafford, and the Carthusians who had sub-
mitted, remained in Charterhouse, where they were
presently joined by John Fox and Maurice Chauncy, both
of whom, having been brought from Beauvale to Sion,
had there at length given way, to the lifelong sorrow and
remorse of Chauncy.
If the monks had dreamed that they would still be
able to maintain their existence as a Carthusian monastery,
the dream was not of long duration. When the struggle
between King and Conscience had first arisen the scheme
of the suppression of monasteries had not yet been made
public, nor, so far as the larger monasteries were concerned,
had it taken visible shape or been announced when Houghton
died. The question which was to break to pieces the
community of Charterhouse, till, in 1537, death or submis-
sion had carried the point, was always that of the supreme
headship of Henry in the Church. But by the time that
Charterhouse had submitted, in May, 1537, the dissolution
THE DISSOLUTION 105
of the greater monasteries and the confiscation of their
goods had already taken its place in the programme which,
little by little since 1533, had unrolled itself before the
people of England. The dying monks in Newgate were
still hanging to their columns when, on June 10 of that
year, William Trafford, under the seal of the Monastery,
signed the surrender of the House, with all its properties,
into the hands of the King. The Monastery was allowed
to continue, a mockery of its former self, till November 15,
when our great oak doors * of the gatehouse were closed
for ever behind the monks as they passed out into the world.
* These doors still exist in situ.
CHAPTER XI
" QUOMODO SEDET SOLA CIVITAS "
FOR nearly three years the great monastery lay desolate.
Two very important documents in the Record Office give
us some picture of its condition when the monks had left
it. The first of these is the inventory attached to the
deed of surrender. The second, even more interesting, is
an inventory made by William Daylle, who claimed wages
as caretaker for one year and a half, and at the end
of that time made his report.
As we read through the surrender inventory we become
assured that already, before it was made, much petty
plundering had gone on, and very much had been removed.
We have already alluded to the earlier and official removal
of the library under Cromwell's orders in 1535. We now
learn that the outgoing monks, in Nov., 1538, were allowed
to take their bedding and beds " and stuff within their
cells," and their own books (probably the supply of
amended literature sent in for their reformation). We
learn that from the church 447 ounces of silver — including
doubtless the silver basins, the enamelled silver pyx, the
holy water stoup, and the silver bell, which Bishop North-
burgh, joint founder with Manny, had left — were delivered
to John Williams for the King, together with such vestments
as were of value (we read, for example, of an angel in gold
embroidered with pearl : of vestments of baudykin and
white velvet and other things). But much else had evidently
gone and is not accounted for. As we are led, by the
sorrowful list, from deserted chamber to chamber, and
read of their forlorn contents, we know that this was not
106
THE DESOLATE MONASTERY 107
the full equipment of a great and thriving monastery.
There is no word of the contents of the guesthouses ;
perhaps they were the perquisites of the six governors
who had lived there. William Trafford, too, was perhaps
within his rights in leaving nothing but " a pan and a
furnesse " in the new Prior's cell — he had already been
given " six silver spoons and a fatte of silver " in reward.
But what of all the kitchen battery ? Perhaps the
" temporal cooks " might have given us the answer. And
what of many other things which belong of necessity to a
Charterhouse in being, but are not in that inventory ?
As we turn from this bare list of derelict effects to the
account of his stewardship sent in by William Daylle, the
mind passes from pots and pans to personalities. We get
a picture of men and characters for which the monastery,
with its silent cells, its fruit-laden orchards, its wilderness
garden, its deserted church, become the background.
Historical names take accidental place in the picture —
we may doubt if some of their owners would care to have
had it known how good their eye was for petty perquisites.
As was fitting, the King himself got the lion's share, not
as the due of the Crown in its high impersonality, but as
for his own consumption — with or without his knowledge.
Gerard Haydon set apart for the King's share forty-seven
cases of glass, and all the wood, timber, and stone " lying
abroad in the Charterhouse " (except twelve loads which
Dr. Layton secured). There are five entries of bay trees,
of fruit trees (ninety-one in number), of rosemary and
other shrubs for the King's garden at Chelsea, whither
went also a load of hay ; and one hundred carp went for
the King to Fey's mill pond (which I take to be Fogswell
pond in Smithfield). Small gratifications, these, which
we must not grudge to one who, Mr. Froude assures us,
felt so deeply the painful necessities that were put upon
him. Master Richard Cromwell's name occurs, he, too,
an amateur of bay trees, and a judge, too, of the value of
wainscot, which he had from two cells under token — a gold
ring — from the Lord Privy Seal, Thomas CromwelJ.
Richard Cromwell, whose true name was Williams, was
108 "QUOMODO SEDET SOLA CIVITAS "
nephew of Thomas Cromwell, and took his name. He
was great-great-grandfather of Oliver Cromwell. Dr.
Layton had not taken an active part in the suppression
of Charterhouse, being employed on similar work elsewhere.
But he lived in Paternoster Row, and was allowed to
exercise his fancy, which led him to secure three merlin
birds and their appurtenances, three boards in the bake-
house, and a bundle of rose trees, with the more solid
selection of twelve loads of timber. One Dr. Cave seems
to have made more of a speciality of foodstuffs. He had
the wheat and the malt. Also the vinegar, and the kitchen
stuff, and the buttery stuff. But it is just to his unknown
memory to say he paid for it. As for Cromwell himself,
" My Lord Privy Seal " was satisfied with a modest bundle
of herbs. And so, with King and subject, with Lord Privy
Seal and bargain-hunting servitors and dealers, we learn
which drew prizes in the great lottery, and which drew
blanks. But it is not till we come to the apportioning
to various tenants of the available cells of the dismantled
place, that we reach the climax of interest.
The cells of the south wing of the Great Cloister east
of the church adjoined several houses in the north-east
angle of Charterhouse Church Yard (Square) which, as we
know from ancient leases, were the property of the Priory.
One of these we know to have been rented in 1529 to John
Neville, third Lord Latimer, who shortly after married
Catharine Parr — destined hereafter to become Queen of
England. The house, we may remind the reader in passing,
became, when Catharine dwelt in it up to 1542, the centre
of a highly learned and brilliant circle of literary men, a
kind of symposium where, men whispered, the new views
were presently far from unknown. This house, which
seems to have been approximately on the site of Nos. 10,
11, in the present square, had its northern boundary hard
up against the monastery buildings. It becomes, therefore,
of curious interest when we read the item, " There was one
little Sir William defaced and took down all the new wainscot
in a cell which was late billeted to his own use as he
intended." This "little Sir William" was Sir William
PARR, D'ARCY, ANGUS 109
Parr, brother of Queen Catharine, who had been knighted
in March, 1539, One may observe here that the monks had
been allowed to carry away the wainscot of their cells.
But one must not forget that the monks who had died
at Tyburn, York, and Newgate had left their cells intact,
and the few cells which offered spoil of wainscot to the
seekers after unconsidered trifles are thus accounted for.
We may feel sure, again, that the three cells spoken of
as adjoining Sir Arthur D'Arcy's house were also in that
portion of the cloister. The expression makes us wonder
which the house was. Sir Arthur D'Arcy, indeed, obtained
the reversion of Lord Latimer's house in 1542, but Daylle's
inventory can hardly be late enough for that. Moreover,
Daylle speaks of Gerard Haydon's having had the keeping
of Sir Arthur's home first after the Suppression, which
seems to suggest the earlier date. Sir Arthur D'Arcy, a
friend and protege of Cromwell, was the son of that Lord
D'Arcy who died on Tower Hill in 1536, for his share in
the Pilgrimage of Grace. The son, perhaps by Cromwell's
influence, retained the favour of the Crown, and held good
posts. After Lord Latimer's death and Catharine Parr's
departure from her home in Charterhouse Square, we find
the name of Sir Arthur in several leases and transfers of
the house, in which also occur the names of Bell (Bishop
of Worcester) and Sir John Tregonwell, the former of
whom played a leading part in public life, and was chosen
by Henry VIII to hold Anne Boleyn's daughter at the
font, while Tregonwell was commissioner for the suppression
of many of the monasteries of the west — a man of better
fame than some others of the same employ. When
D'Arcy gave up the tenure of the five cells we find from
Daylle's account that he passed them on with the house
in question to Lord Angus, and so we find Charterhouse
giving shelter to one of the most picturesque figures of
English or of Scottish history. Archibald Douglas, sixth
Earl of Angus, was grandson of the Great Earl, Archibald
Douglas, " Bell-the-Cat," who died on Flodden Field.
The sixth earl, young, handsome, and of attractive character,
had won the heart of Margaret Tudor, Dowager Queen
i
110 "QUOMODO SEDET SOLA CIVITAS "
of Scotland, sister of Henry VIII. They were secretly
married, and a less happy marriage could not have been
devised. It produced no love between the pair, and it
brought upon them both, but especially on Angus, the
deadly hatred of all the Scottish nobles. The masterful
lady soon tired of her young husband. She had no small
portion of her brother's headstrong will, and something
perhaps of his taste for divorce. Angus, indeed, beyond
question gave Margaret good cause for jealousy, but by
general belief Margaret herself was very indiscreet, if
nothing worse. Their daughter, Margaret Douglas, who
presently married Lennox, and became the mother of
Henry Darnley, brought them small joy. They gradually
drifted apart, and Queen Margaret determined to get a
divorce. Henry VIII strongly opposed it, but the
dowager was not a woman to be baulked. She openly
sided with her husband's enemies, and when Angus fought
his way into Edinburgh, she greeted him with a volley of
firearms, which only killed a few onlookers who had
followed from the High Street. The rupture was very
soon complete. Something like civil war ensued between
Angus and his many enemies. In 1528 Margaret had her
way. Clement VII, through the Cardinal of Ancona,
granted her a divorce. There was no legal ground for it,
and Margaret must have failed in any modern court. To
the end of her life Angus refused any view but that he
was still married to her. Meanwhile her son James went
far beyond her in fierce hatred of Angus and of all the
Douglas family. In 1537 his sister, Janet Gordon, on a
charge of poisoning, of which she was almost surely
innocent — her real crime was that of showing sympathy
with her brother — was burnt alive at Edinburgh Castle.
Small wonder if Angus was for ever in arms against his
King. An exile from Scotland, he was often in London,
where Henry granted him a pension of 1000 marks and
gave him shelter — perhaps the lodging in Charterhouse
was from that source. It was not till some years after
1543,rwhen Mary Stuart was crowned Queen, that he slowly
gave his allegiance to her and to Scotland. The act of
ANGUS, MARMADUKE CONSTABLE 111
Ralph Evers, the English commander, who had wantonly
outraged the tombs of the Douglas at Melrose, had its share
in the change. Angus waylaid him a few days later at
Ancrum Moor, when the whole moorside suddenly became
alive with men who rose from the heather and swept from
the face of the earth the English troops and their leader.
Never was Nemesis in a mood more swift nor yet more
picturesque. It was otherwise at Pinkie a few years
later, in 1547. There, by strange coincidence, it was the
pikes under Angus, who alone of all the Scottish host
made good their victory in that part of the field against
Sir Arthur D'Arcy's and Grey's cavalry division of the
English army, which that day was commanded by Somerset
and John Dudley, himself hereafter for three short months
to be, as Duke of Northumberland, the owner of Charter-
house. And so, with strange changes of fortune, this
brave adventurous exile, whose life was as full of romance
as his character was of a certain chivalry, passed presently
out of history to his rest at Abernethy. The short-time
tenant of the cell in Charterhouse could have little foreseen
the day not far ahead, when his direct descendant, through
whom he was to become the ancestor of a great royal line,
should come back to this same spot as King of England.
The third occupant, Sir Marmaduke Constable, was
also one who had shared the incidents which made the
history of his day. A brave and capable soldier himself,
and the descendant of a line of soldiers, he had fought on
the English side at Flodden, had taken part in the field of
the Cloth of Gold, and had won honour at Jedburgh and at
Fernhurst. At the time when the cells at Charterhouse
were in his keeping he was a member of the Council of the
North. Probably he used the cells on occasion of his
return from time to time to London.
But these uses of the deserted monastery were confined
to a very small portion of it. In the main the monastery
had no use. Maurice Chauncy tells an appalling tale of
its profanation. He says, " Our House was given over
to strangers and converted to the vilest uses. In the
112 "QUOMODO SEDET SOLA CIVITAS "
church they placed tents and implements of war, they
hewed with axes not only the images of the saints, but
even of the Crucified, and stamped upon them. They
leapt on the holy altars, danced, and played with dice,
and committed in that sacred place other detestable and
abominable things rather to be wept over than related."
I have already expressed the view that Maurice Chauncy
may be accepted as a safe witness for what happened
within the monastery when he was still within it. But
for what took place when he was out of England and had
to depend on second-hand hearsay, we may, perhaps, hope
that he need not be followed to the extreme of all his
details. Bad enough at its best, one may trust that the
profanation did not reach the worst. For the first year
and a half at least after the suppression, covered as it is
by Daylle's report, we incidentally learn that the church,
kept under lock and key by Master Doctor Cave, was
inaccessible, and therefore presumably safe. The state of
things hinted at in the last sentence, if we must accept it,
could only belong to the three years from 1542 to 1545.
For in the former of these years we find by letters patent
of June 12, 1542, that Henry assigned the site to two of
his servants, John Bridges, " valect," and Thomas Hales,
" gromet," as a depository for the King's tents, hunting
nets (haldrum), and new pavilions — for which the many
empty chambers no doubt were found convenient.
If one asks what fitness there could be in the storing of
hunting nets in such a site, one may remind the reader
that in those days the neighbourhood was by no means
without opportunity of sport. A hundred years later it
was still the custom of the city fathers to meet in the
neighbourhood of what is now Tottenham Court Road,
and having dined — inevitably — to draw for a fox in the
coppices of that open country.* The Pavilions, one supposes,
would be handy at Charterhouse for use at the jousts of
neighbouring Smithfield.
* I have myself, when a boy, met, at Cambridge, about 1860,
an old Carthusian, aged then about seventy, who assured me that
as a boy he had followed snipe in the wet meadows between Charter-
house and Islington.
NORTH 113
Meanwhile, Sir Edward North, Knight and Privy
Councillor, who had succeeded the unhappy Thomas
Cromwell, whose head fell in 1540, as Chancellor of the
Court of Augmentations, had good means of knowing the
value of such a site, and on April 14, 1545, letters patent
transferred the Priory site with all its buildings and
grounds from Hale and Bridges to the shrewd nobleman,
while the King's nets and pavilions found fresh refuge in
the ruined Priory of St. John of Jerusalem hard by.
We are standing now on the threshold of a new period.
The monastery days are over. The mansion days begin.
From this time for sixty-six years [1545-1611] the links
with the outer world are those which bind it with strange
intimacy to the stirring history of Tudor and Jacobean days.
CHAPTER XII
THE MANSION PERIOD — EDWARD LORD NORTH — THE
DUKE OF NORTHUMBERLAND — LORD NORTH —
1545-1564
THE new owner of Charterhouse was a typical product
of his age. That age was prolific in men of very noble
character, but also of men of very base character : of men
on both sides of the great questions which rent England,
who were noble enough to face any loss, even to that of
life itself, sooner than betray their belief; and also of
men base enough to make any profession and to do any
deed if gain were to be got by it. And between these
extremes lay a great mass, a whole series of gradated
types, of men who, lodging their conscience in a kind of
halfway house, were ready to move in this direction or
that as the tide of popularity passed hither or thither.
These were the men who played always for safety, and,
in some cases, but by no means in all, were able to obtain
it. To which of those diverse types the first private
owner of Charterhouse belonged must be left to the reader
to decide.
Edward North, who became Sir Edward in 1541,
and Lord North in 1554, was the son of Roger North,
citizen of London, and of Christiana Warcop, a lady of
good family in Yorkshire. His father, not a rich man,
afforded to send him first to St. Paul's School, and to
Peterhouse, Cambridge, and afterwards entered him at
the Inns of Court. By his undoubted abilities he soon
made his mark at the Law, and we find him presently
114
EDWARD NORTH 115
retained as City Counsel. He may have owed this appoint-
ment in some measure to the influence of Alderman William
Wilkinson who had married his sister, Joan North.* Edward
North's versatility and culture made him acceptable in
London society, where he was long a well-known figure.
He now had his feet firmly planted on the ladder of success.
We find him in 1530 joint clerk to Parliament with Sir
Brian Tuke.f He became Serjeant-at-law and King's
Serjeant somewhere about 1536. But, meanwhile, he
had married Alice Squier, widow of John Brockendon,
who brought him a large fortune, for which act of prudence
his descendant and biographer Dudley North records,
as in duty bound, his gratitude. He now bought the estate
of Kirtling Towers near Newmarket, and a few years
later we find him in Parliament as member for Cambridge-
shire. Meanwhile, in 1540, the fall of Thomas Cromwell
had come. The butcherly scene on Tower Hill in the
summer of that year had ended a career that has no parallel
in our history. That greatest disciple of Nicolas Machia-
velli — the only disciple, indeed, who has ever put the
doctrines of his master to the test of complete practice,
had in the eleven years of his public life shaken the ancient
systems, religious, political, social, to their very base.
One of the details of his administration had been the founda-
tion of the Court of Augmentations for dealing with the
augmented Crown income resulting from the dissolution
of the monasteries. Cromwell's death created vacancies
in that Court. Sir Richard Rich became Chancellor
of the Court, and North was appointed treasurer. In
1545, the year of his acquiring Charterhouse, he became
joint Chancellor with Rich, who, presently resigning,
left Sir Edward North as sole Chancellor. He was now
in the full tide of his success. Dudley North —who in his
* See Patent Roll, No. 717, Feb., 1543. License to Sir John
Williams (kinsman of Thomas Cromwell) to alienate to William
Wilkinson and Joan his wife, a tenement (lately occupied by John
Lelande the antiquary). We are able to identify this by successive
leases as a house on the site which, after conveyance to Sir Edward
North, became part of Rutland House, Charterhouse Square.
t Holbein's portraits of Sir Brian Tuke are now at Grosvenor
House and Norwich.
116 THE MANSION PERIOD
biography naively admits more than once how little he
knew about his ancestor — tells the often repeated tale
that some one at Court had whispered ill opinions to
Henry, and how the latter sent a messenger, no friend, to
North, to summon him from Charterhouse — it was done
with rudeness, says the story — to his presence. The
King receives him angrily, charging him with having
cheated him of certain lands in Middlesex (i.e. Charter-
house). North humbly pleads that the King had given
them to him, and the King, presently pacified, treats
him graciously. I am afraid the tale, however picturesque,
has little in it to convince. North received the letters
patent for Charterhouse in April, 1545. Henry died Jan. 28,
1547. This interview, if it ever took place, must have
happened between those dates. Now North had already
become a most conspicuous figure among Henry's servants
as Chancellor of the Augmentations, a court very near
to Henry's purse, which I fear was carried very near his
heart. And there could have been few corners of Henry's
realm more deeply impressed on his mind than Charter-
house and all that brought it to his memory. It is incon-
ceivable that Henry should, in the short possible interval,
have so lost touch with his minister and his affairs.
Nor can we imagine Henry, even in his most gouty moments,
adopting a method so casual when a notice to the Augmenta-
tion Office would have brought the information. Moreover,
in 1546 North had already become a member of Henry's
Privy Council, and in that same year, as death approached,
Henry, making his will, had nominated North as one of
the sixteen executors who were to act as guardians to
Edward VI. The rapid change from the complete ignorance
implied in the tale to the complete confidence implied in
the facts, in so short a time, compels us to put aside the
picturesque story, where many another of the tales which
hang about the history of Charterhouse have had to go.
In Edward's reign, North remained a Privy Councillor,
and we find him as witness to Edward's will, but he resigned,
under pressure, it is said, the Chancellorship of Augmenta-
tions. As Edward's death drew near, and John Dudley,
NORTHUMBERLAND, JANE GREY 117
Duke of Northumberland, matured his plans for the
succession of his daughter-in-law, Lady Jane Grey, North,
in appearance at least, threw in his lot with the great
nobleman. His name appears upon the long list of those
who had been gathered at Greenwich by Northumberland,
and who, headed by Cranmer, signed the document which
declared the Lady Jane to be the heir to the throne, Mary
and Elizabeth disqualified by taint of birth. For once he
had, like so many others, fully compromised himself.
Possibly the reason of this may not be far to seek.
He had, it would seem, resolved to abandon public
life and retire to Kirtling. For he was at this very
moment in negotiation with Northumberland for the
sale of Charterhouse, and the deed of sale, in which no
sum of purchase money is mentioned, is dated May 4, 1553,
and, for the time, Charterhouse was no longer his.
Northumberland became its owner.
One has to ask, What was Northumberland's object
in buying Charterhouse ? He was already owner of the
magnificent palace of Durham House in the Strand. But
Guildford Dudley and Lady Jane Grey had no separate
palace in London. They were both living with their
father at Durham House when they were sent for their
death to the Tower. I am persuaded that Northumberland
bought Charterhouse in 1553 as a palace for his son and
daughter, till the day should come — it was not at that
moment imminent — when Lady Jane should be Queen
of England. Northumberland had already stored St. John's
Priory with furniture for the mansion in Charterhouse. If
Edward's life had been prolonged, there might have been
many years of occupancy for Guildford Dudley and for
Jane. The site was good enough, moreover, even for a
Queen's Palace to arise within it. But, for himself, it is
difficult to suppose that Northumberland would have
needed it.
The death of Edward on July 6, 1553, brought with it
the moment for testing Northumberland's scheme, as ill
conducted as it was ill conceived. He had failed to reckon
his own unpopularity and his own incapacity. In less than
118 EDWARD LORD NORTH
seven weeks all was over. When John Dudley died on
Tower Hill on August 22, this second owner of the mansion
of Charterhouse had held it for fifteen weeks and three
days only. It at once reverted, with all his other pos-
sessions, to the Crown.
Sir Edward North had, as we have seen, signed the
Greenwich declaration in favour of Queen Jane. He had
thereby incurred the guilt and the fate of a traitor. But
within a few months we find him not merely pardoned —
the greater number of the signatories were so — but receiv-
ing from Mary the grant once more of Charterhouse. Pro-
bably no money had passed from Northumberland to North.
The deed, signed by Mary, is merely a repetition of that
by which her father had originally conveyed the monastery
to North, but the brief preamble contains the statement
that Mary's grant to North was in recognition of services
rendered. One at once has to ask, in face of the Greenwich
declaration, what were these services ? It can only
suggest itself, and Dudley North himself suggests it without
any reprobation of his ancestor's supposed treachery,
that though North had on paper sided with the conspirators
he had secretly given Mary an assurance of his support.
Be this how it may, North was now once more owner of
Charterhouse, and in high favour with Mary for the rest
of her reign. It was probably this very favour which
made him abandon the idea of retiring to Kirtling from
public life. Under Mary he was once more a Privy Coun-
cillor, one of the nobles told off to receive Philip II on his
arrival. He became Baron North of Kirtling, and was
put upon the Council for the arrest and punishment of
heretics.
Once more the scene changes. When the daughter
of Catharine of Aragon ended her pathetic life in November,
1558, and the daughter of Anne Boleyn took her place
upon the English throne, by what means was North to
make for himself the transition from Queen Mary to Queen
Elizabeth as easy, as profitable withal, as the transition
from Queen Jane to Queen Mary had been ? The practised
courtier proved equal to the occasion. Either on his
ELIZABETH AT CHARTERHOUSE 119
own offer or on a suggestion made to him, it was arranged
that Elizabeth on her entry into London should be his
guest at Charterhouse.*
Mary had died before the dawn of Nov. 17. On Nov. 20,
a Sunday, Elizabeth had held her first Council of State
at Hatfield, but her meeting with the general body of her
nobles and gentlemen was not yet. On the Wednesday,
Nov. 23, she set out from Hatfield and rode to London.
At Highgate the Bishops met her and kissed her hand one
by one. It was then that as Bonner approached she drew
back her hand in horror from him. After a brief delay
the cavalcade set out again. As they passed across the
low lands between Islington and Charterhouse over which
the mists were rising that late November afternoon, the
Queen's highway proved so atrocious that the whole
company abandoned it and took to the open fields, entering
Charterhouse at the back, instead of again taking to the
road which would have led them round to the main entrance
in Charterhouse Churchyard. That same evening came
greeting from Don Gomez Suarez de Figuerra de Cordova,
Conde de Feria, ambassador to Philip II. With the
greeting sent as from Philip came also a ring as from him.
Next day Elizabeth held her first reception in London.
The Courtyards and the Throne Room (Tapestry Room)
were thronged with the great stream of titled and untitled
subjects who came to do homage to " the splendid Tudor
girl." Amongst them came, this time in person, and
once more carrying some of the rings which the dying
Mary had handed to Feria's fiancee (Jane Dormer) for con-
veyance to Elizabeth. The Queen, by one account, received
him graciously, by another account with coldness. It
seems that the magnificent future ruler of the Netherlands
had introduced his master's suit with little fear of a refusal, f
But Elizabeth, at five and twenty, had served as long an
* It must be remembered that the only royal palace in London,
St. James, was out of the question, since there the dead Queen Mary
lay, waiting her funeral at Westminster more than three weeks later.
t Feria's very frank description of the scene in the Tapestry
Boom is contained in a letter to his master Philip II, once in the
archives at Simancas, now removed to Madrid.
120 EDWARD LORD NORTH
apprenticeship to the ways of the world as Feria himself
with all his diplomacy. It is certain that at no distant
date from the Charterhouse interview Feria had learnt
that he had met his match and hated her to the end of
his life with an undying hatred.
The Queen remained five days in Charterhouse, and
every day the throngs and the enthusiasm — genuine,
moreover, as it had been five sad years ago, for her sister —
grew every day. On the sixth day she set out for the
Tower, whence to proceed, according to the ancient etiquette
for sovereigns, to her cornation at Westminster. It was
a splendid company that was marshalled that day in the
little entrance court between the gatehouse and the portal
of North's palace. When the Queen came down and
took her place the gorgeous procession moved forward
amongst the crowds gathered along her route. Let Henry
Machyn add the colour to the scene in his own quaint
words and quainter spelling —
" The xxviijth day of November the Queen removed
to the Tower from the Lord North's plasse which was the
Charter Howsse. The stretes unto the Tower of London
was newe gravelled. Her grace rod thrugh Barbecan and
Crepulgat, by London Wall unto Bysshope-gate and up
to Leden-halle and through Gracyus Strett and Fanchyrche
Strett ; and a-for rod gentyllmen and knyghtes and
lordes and after cam all the trumpets blohyng and then
cam all the haroldes in a-ray ; and my lord of Pembroke
bare the Quen's sword ; then cam her Grace on horsbake in
purple welvett with a skarpe abowt her neke and serganttes
of armes abowt here' Grace ; and next after rod Robart
Dudley her master of her horse ; and so the gard with
halberds. Ther was shyche shutying of Gunes as never
was hard a-for ; so to the towre with all the nobulles. And
so here Grace lay in the towre unto the V day of Dessember
that was sant Necolas evyn. And ther was in serten
plasses Chylderyn with speches and odur places syngyng
and playing with regalles."
And so the great procession passed out of the gatehouse
and left the owner of the Charterhouse to his reflections.
NORFOLK 121
Elizabeth might use a subject's wealth to her entertain-
ment, but she was far too shrewd a judge of character to
make use of such an one as North in any position of great
trust for her perilous passage in the days that lay before.
In each of the three previous reigns he had served as
Privy Councillor. Elizabeth dispensed with his services.
Dudley North tells us that his ancestor had already been
living about this time above his income and Elizabeth
was an expensive guest. North took no great gain from
the days which Elizabeth had spent in Charterhouse.
There were other figures marshalled in the Courtyard
that day besides North and the Queen herself who were
destined to join their names to the history of Charterhouse.
One of these was young Thomas Howard, fourth Duke of
Norfolk, a boy of twenty-two, who sat his horse waiting
to take his place at the head of the nobles as premier peer
of England. He had already a great eye for a palace as
for anything else that tasted of magnificence, and it may
be that that day he had cast longing eyes on the place that
was to be his some seven years hence, and which was to
weave itself so closely into his story and his fate.
Once more, three years later, one knows not exactly
why, Elizabeth spent three days as North's guest at
Charterhouse from July 10 to July 13, coming thither
from a visit of a few hours to the Tower
" for the inspectun of her mynts and her Grace whent
owt of the Yron Gatt over Tower Hyll unto Algatt Chyrche
and so down Hondyche to the Spyttyll and so downe
Hoge lane and over the feldes to the Charter howse my
Lord North's plase [here follows the description of her
pageant once again] . . . and the feldes of pepull gret
nomber as ever was sene and ther tared till Monday."
We read in Machyn how one of these nights — his state-
ment is confused — she rode from " the Chaterhouse by
Clarkynewell over the feldes unto the Sayvoy unto
master secretore Sysselle to soper," and how " after grett
122 EDWARD LORD NORTH
chere tyll mydnyght " . . . " she ryd to bed at the Charter-
house."
Once more, on the fourth day (July 13) the streets were
new gravelled with sand, and the procession formed up in
the courtyard for a royal progress through the city more
gorgeous than the first. Machyn gives the route as Smith-
field, Newgate, St. Nichilas' Shambles, Cheapside, Cornhyll
to Aldgate, Whitechapel and back : " and all thes plases
where hangyd with cloth of arres and carpetes and with
sylke and Chepeside hangyd with Cloth of Gold and Cloth
of Sylver and velvett of all colours and taffatas."
This time, tradition has it that when the Queen had
left Charterhouse its owner found himself something like
a ruined man, and that this was the cause of his giving up
public life and spending most of his time at Kirtling
Towers. It may be so, but for myself I think another
reason the more probable. He was getting old. No man
understood the signs of the times better than he. For
him, under Elizabeth, public life had closed. He had
played the great game with all its changes and chances
for fully fifty years. It was time for him to be gone from
it all, and so, in 1564, the last year of his life, he was in
treaty with Thomas Howard, fourth Duke of Norfolk, for
the sale of Charterhouse. He was back there in December,
but the hand of death was on him. The last day of the
year was the last day of his life. The contract was still
unsigned when the new year came in, and Edward North
had already passed to his rest. It was signed next day
by his son, Lord Roger North, who thus, for a few hours
only, was owner of Charterhouse, which from Jan. 1, 1565,
was to bear the name of Howard House.
CHAPTER XIII
HOWARD HOUSE— THE FOURTH DUKE OF NORFOLK
WHEN, on Jan. 1, 1565, the day after the death of Lord
North, Charterhouse became the legal property of the Duke
of Norfolk, it thereby obtained the name of Howard House
which it was to bear through three successive ownerships.
The name, indeed, did not entirely supplant that of Charter-
house. Both names are found in constant use till the
foundation of the Hospital in 1611. The name of Howard
House then dropped out of use, though it reappears from
time to time and the ordinance map of London late in the
nineteenth century still showed the name. Thomas
Howard,* fourth Duke of Norfolk, was twenty-nine years old
when he became the owner of Charterhouse. He was the
grandson of that Thomas Howard, third Duke of Norfolk,
who filled so large a place in the history of Henry VIII's
day, and who on the night of Jan. 27, 1547, lay in the
Tower awaiting execution on Tower Hill next morning.
But the night brought with it the death of Henry himself,
and the Constable on his own responsibility postponed the
execution till the pleasure of the Council should be known.
Spared, but imprisoned during Edward's reign, and restored
to his title by Mary, he had lived to see the death of his
enemy Northumberland, and dying in 1554, the first year
of Mary's reign, had been succeeded by his grandson,
our Thomas Howard, then a boy of eighteen.
His son, Henry Earl of Surrey — commonly known as
* There had been earlier Dukes of Norfolk of the Mowbray line.
One of these in the reign of Richard II had founded the Charterhouse
of Epworth in Axholme, where bis arms may still be seen on the
farmhouse which occupies one of the monastic buildings.
123
124 THE FOURTH DUKE OF NORFOLK
Surrey the poet — had died on the scaffold in 1536, the year
before Henry's death, and had been the direct or indirect
cause of the fall of his father. Their disaster had been
brought about by Hertford's influence. Surrey, young,
vain, gallant — described as " the most foolish proud boy
in England — was free and reckless of speech, and not
discreet of conduct. He had twice suffered imprisonment
in the Fleet prison at the order of the Council for such
enormities as shooting pebbles at citizens' windows of a
night, and for eating meat in Lent. He had been bravely
rash at the siege of Boulogne in 1545 ; and a year later,
when Henry's death drew near and men in taverns dis-
cussed the question of the coming Protector for the boy-
King Edward, Surrey had talked loudly of his father's
claims in preference to those of Hertford. Brought to
trial for these vapourings and further charged with having
quartered the arms of Edward the Confessor on his own —
according to an ancient grant, as he alleged, of Richard II
to Thomas Mowbray — he was condemned on the evidence
of his friend Sir Richard Southwell, and of his own sister,
married to the Duke of Richmond, illegitimate son of the
King. Technically guilty of high treason he laid down
his life at the age of thirty on Tower Hill. To-day there
are few Sundays on which worse treason is not uttered in
Hyde Park. Surrey died less of his own treason than
of Henry's gout.
His two sons, Thomas, aged ten, and Henry Earl of
Northampton, were handed over by the Privy Council
to the care, not of their mother, but of their aunt, Mary
Fitzroy, the Duchess of Richmond — a choice which was
evidently due to the belief that the Countess of Surrey
was a devoted adherent of the old religion. The boy
lost, thereby, a mother as well as a father. John Foxe,
the martyrologist, then in deep poverty, was selected
as his tutor and seems to have won the boy's affection,
since it was he to whom the Duke sent in 1572 when his
own hour was come. But in 1553, when the grandfather
was set at liberty, Foxe was removed and White, Bishop
of Lincoln, substituted. In that same year he acted as
THE FOURTH DUKE OF NORFOLK 125
first gentleman to Philip II on his arrival in England —
he and Philip were destined to have other relationship
later on — and the next year saw the boy installed at his
grandfather's death as Duke of Norfolk and Earl Marshal
of England (August 25, 1554).
It cannot be supposed that the bringing up which we
have described in the home of his vice-mother, Mary
Fitzroy, had been an ideal training in self -discipline and
strength of character for a boy who had no doubt inherited
from his father some of his foolish proudness and some
too of his more dangerous traits, and who found himself, at
the age of eighteen, the premier peer of England, possessed
of all the means for gratifying his innate love of splendour.
When a few years later he proudly told Elizabeth, who
taxed him roundly with his ambition to marry Mary of
Scots, that he counted himself more than Mary's equal
when he found himself in his own Castle of Norwich, the
speech, from many points of view, was typical of the man.
Descended from Edward IV, a cousin of Queen Katharine
Howard, a cousin of Queen Anne Boleyn, and therefore of
Elizabeth, who indeed used to call him " cousin," he had
in his veins blood as royal as that of the daughter of Mary
of Guise, and pride, perhaps, to correspond. We have
seen him as Earl Marshal heading Elizabeth's cavalcade
as it rode from the doors of Lord North's Charterhouse.
From that time forward he was to dance attendance, like
many another young noble, on the imperious Lady. She
sent him, perhaps to make trial of the stuff that was in
him, in 1559 to take command of the Army of the North,
much against his will, for the defence of Newcastle, but,
shrewdly enough, with Sir Ralph Sadler and Sir John
Croft as his advisers. He returned next year to Court
life in London. Already he had been twice married. In
1556 he had taken to wife the Lady Mary Fitzalan, daughter
of the twelfth Earl of Arundel, who died on August 27
of the next year, a month or two after the birth of her son.
This boy, to whom Philip II stood godfather, was to become
Philip Earl of Arundel, the next owner of Charterhouse.
In 1558, at the age of 22, Norfolk married Lady Margaret
K
126 THE FOURTH DUKE OF NORFOLK
Audley,* daughter of Lord Chancellor Audley, of Audley
Inn or End at Saffron Walden. She became the mother
of Lord Thomas Howard, Earl of Suffolk, who was presently
to sell Charterhouse to Thomas Sutton. But to return
to Norfolk himself. In 1563, by the death of Margaret
Audley, Norfolk was once more a widower, and still con-
stantly in attendance on Elizabeth. He was with her in
1564 when she went to Cambridge. It was on this occasion
that the sight of the unfinished buildings of Magdalen
College, which his father-in-law, Lord Audley, had left, led
him to make a gift towards their completion.
In January, 1565, Norfolk entered into possession of
Charterhouse, and he seems at once to have set about
the changes which were to make it perhaps the finest
palace in London. With these I must deal more exactly
in the next chapter. In 1567 he brought home to it his
third duchess, Elizabeth Leyburne, daughter of Sir Francis
Leyburne, of Cunswick Hall, Cumberland. But the poor
lady's days in Charterhouse were few, for she died on
Sept. 7 of that year. It was very soon after this third
widowhood, namely, on August 5, 1568, that Norfolk
entertained Queen Elizabeth at Howard House. It was
her third visit to the place, though her first to him. Once
more we get the picturesque vision of her progress as she
passes from the Tower through the streets crowded with
her subjects, the Queen, delighted at her reception, stand-
ing up from time to time to get a better view. De Silva,
the Spanish Ambassador, shows in a letter to his master,
Philip II, how greatly the scene impressed him, but of
the reception itself at Howard House we have no record.
It was, this time, only for one day. One wonders how
matters stood between Norfolk and the Queen that August
afternoon, for already there were rumours in the air of
another marriage for Norfolk — and Elizabeth was no fool,
except in her own 'matrimonial affairs. Men had already
been talking of Norfolk as a match for Mary Stuart —
* The mistake of various historians of Charterhouse who record
that Lord Audley owned the suppressed monastery in the reign of
Henry VIII is doubtless to be traced to this source. Audley never
owned Charterhouse.
ELIZABETH IN GREAT HALL 127
probably were talking of it that day at Charterhouse
out of ear-shot of the Queen. She sat that day among
her courtiers in the Banquet Hall a very few yards away
from the rooms in which the treason was to be hatched,
which, if it had succeeded, would have taken from her her
throne and perhaps her life.
It is often stated that it was at the Conference of York
in October of that year that the first suggestion of the
marriage was made to Norfolk by Maitland of Lethington.
No doubt both the latter and John Lesley, Bishop of Ross,
did talk of it to him at York, but at that very time Lord
Montague had spoken of it to Don Gueran d'Espes, the
Spanish Ambassador, as a thing which had been for some
time arranged, not indeed between the two principals,
but by Lord Arundel and his party, and Gueran duly sent
the news to Philip II. The thing, beyond doubt, had
already taken shape in Norfolk's mind. His sister, Mar-
garet Howard, Lady Scrope, wife to Lord Scrope, who was
in charge of Mary at Carlisle Castle, was to act as his agent
in his love affair — if that can be called a love affair where
neither lover was destined ever to set eyes upon the other.
Lady Scrope let Mary know from her brother that she
had little to fear from the York Conference.
Norfolk duly went that October to York as Chief
English Commissioner, with Lord Sussex and Sir Ralph
Sadler as his colleagues, to meet the Scottish Commis-
sioners— Moray, the Bishop of Ross (Lesley), and others —
all gathered there nominally to find a method of peace
between Mary and her subjects, but actually — for so
the commission was regarded and treated — to inquire
into the share of Mary in the murder of Darnley. The
commission was as futile as its sequel at Westminster
that winter. But before it ended Moray, under a strong
challenge, produced the famous Casket letters which, if
Mary really wrote them, proved her to be a guilty and
abandoned woman. It is no task for this book to inquire
whether they were or were not genuine. It is quite certain
that Norfolk, unless he lied, thought them so. But the
idea of the marriage had dazzled him, and his moral sense
128 THE FOURTH DUKE OF NORFOLK
was not strong enough to let the matter weigh against
the hope of becoming King Consort of Scotland and,
perhaps, in his secretly growing thoughts, something
more than that.
A month or so later Norfolk received orders from Eliza-
beth to go to Berwick * to inspect the defences of the town
— a convenient method of putting an end to a hopeless
situation.
That winter and all the next spring the rumours grew
and spread in London, and not without reason. John
Lesley, Bishop of Ross, till lately attendant on Mary
in her captivity at Tutbury, was now her Ambassador in
London. He had been one of that strange party which
two days after the mock trial of Bothwell for Darnley's
murder had dined with him at Ainslie's Tavern in Edin-
burgh, and had drawn up an advice that Bothwell should
marry Mary. Able, subtle, unscrupulous, he had the one
virtue that he was faithful to his mistress through good
repute and evil. He now became her agent in the strange
dealings with Norfolk. But he was presently to prove
no match for Cecil, from whom little that happened in
England ever remained for long a secret. By the summer
of 1569, Cecil, and Elizabeth through him, knew nearly
as much as Ross and Norfolk. Elizabeth sent for Norfolk
to Hampton Court, and one day in the garden, seizing him
by the elbow and giving him a meaning pinch, bade him
take heed on what pillow he laid his head. Norfolk protested
loudly — must surely have seemed to that shrewd lady to
protest too much — that he knew nothing of such ambitions,
and in short had but a poor opinion of Her Majesty of
Scotland, f and so forth, with the further result that before
he left Hampton Court he had signed an undertaking to
have no dealings of the kind. Elizabeth charged him on
his allegiance J to be true to his word. And perhaps
* A little more than a year later Captain Thomas Sutton, who
had already in 1558-9 commanded a company at Berwick, was made
Master- General of the Ordnance for Berwick and the North.
t He called the Queen of Scots " a notorious adulteress and
murderess."
% At his trial Norfolk drew a curious distinction somewhat
NORFOLK IN THE TOWER 129
that day he meant to be so, but before the summer was out
Norfolk's promises had gone to make pavement else-
where.
Meanwhile Norfolk had set foot upon another path
of danger. He had joined in a plot against Cecil which
had easily been discovered. He had gone back from the
interview at Hampton Court to Howard House, and
Cecil knew well what he was doing there. The Regent,
Murray, had betrayed to Elizabeth the gist of a talk
which he had with Norfolk, and the latter was even now
from his privie chamber * arranging for Mary's rescue
from Wingfield. Norfolk was summoned to her presence
once more, and had left the court without taking leave.
A royal pursuivant was sent to Howard House to fetch
him. He was, he said, too ill of ague to leave his house,
and so, irresolute, he stayed a-bed and let his moment
of action go past. When he left it he went not to Hampton
Court but to Kenninghall in Suffolk. That October
Elizabeth herself took action. She summoned him once
more. With a few horsemen (" pocos caballos," reported
Gueran) he rode back to Howard House. On his way
thence to Windsor he was arrested, and after a short
sojourn at Burnham was, on Oct. 8, 1569, transferred to
the Tower.
It was this moment that the Northern Earls, Northum-
berland and Westmoreland, in whose plot Norfolk was
deeply compromised — his youngest sister Jane was West-
moreland's wife moreover — chose for their rising. Dis-
mayed at the arrest of Norfolk on whom they had counted,
they looked for a like fate for themselves and struck the
blow which was both too late and too early. The rebellion,
as poorly timed as poorly carried out, with two half-hearted
incapable leaders, melted before a not very formidable
advance of the Queen's troops. The ignominious flight
of the last relics of the rebels' host from Durham to Hexham,
in December, put an end to the ill-starred enterprise. There
indicative of his type of mind. He admitted that Elizabeth had
charged him, but was not sure she had charged him " on his
allegiance."
* The room overlooking the Master's Court at Charterhouse.
130 THE FOURTH DUKE OF NORFOLK
was at Darlington a letter written on Dec. 18 by Captain
Thomas Sutton,* the future Founder of Charterhouse,
who served as an officer with Warwick's troops, which
describes the rout of the day before. The miserable failure
of his friends should have given pause to Norfolk in the
Tower. But he was blind now to every vision save that
of the Scottish Throne, to which at length had been
added also that of the English Throne.
For all the next year, 1570, Norfolk was, as best he
could manage, in communication still with Ross and the
agents of the Scottish Queen. By means of a certain
maid named " Nell," presently to be housemaid at Howard
House, he got his letters conveyed from the Tower to
Charterhouse. But early in August, 1570, the plague
being severe in the Tower Hamlets, Norfolk was allowed
to return to Howard House with Sir Henry Neville, who
lived there as his custodian. Whatever vigilance Neville
may have observed at first, it soon degenerated into the
utmost laxity. Ross and Ridolfi were brought in past
the doors of the chamber where Neville f lay in bed at
9 of the evening — and " Backdores " were left open for
Ross to come in by. One is compelled to suspect that
such carelessness was not of neglect, but perhaps of William
Cecil's suggestion. He knew where to lay his hand on
his witnesses whenever he wanted them, and the more
evidence of treason they could furnish him with the
better.
Norfolk spent his enforced residence in Charterhouse
that year in two ways. Partly in decorating and improv-
ing his mansion — had he any thought that it might be
needed for a Higher Fortune ? — and we find that to this
period belongs the noble screen of our Great Hall, which
bears the initials and date T.N. 1571. To these months,
from August, 1570 to Sept., 1571, belongs also the brick-
covered arcade and terrace, known to Charterhouse school-
boys as " Cloisters," which led from the Mansion to the
* Now in the Record Office.
t I conjecture that Sir Henry Neville's rooms were in the part
of the House overlooking the garden or bowling-green9 once the
Great Cloister, now occupied by the Preacher.
CLOISTERS (THE DUKE OP NORFOLK'S ARCADE).
1570-71.
RIDOLFI 131
sumptuous Tennis Court. But Norfolk had more absorb-
ing occupation than this for his leisure. Before the
spring of 1571 was far advanced he was deeply involved
in the plot known as the Ridolfi Plot, which had for its
object the dethronement and probably the death of Eliza-
beth, and her replacement by Mary Stuart (when married
to Norfolk). Alva was to send troops over from Holland,
and their landing was to be the signal of the rising of some
40,000 men at Norfolk's bidding. The details of the plot
were in the hands of Ross and Ridolfi. The latter was
a Florentine Banker, settled in London, who acted as agent
to Pope Pius V, and to Alva and Philip II. He was in
his own right a Senator of Florence. He had the taste
for intrigue which was almost a national characteristic,
but he had no other qualification, save lack of scruple,
for his task. A " quarrelous and bitter man," says William
Barker, Norfolk's secretary, in his confession, one who
was subject to sudden furious outbursts. A man, more-
over, who could not hold his tongue. Once, indeed,
after the most dangerous of all his interviews with Norfolk,
in the short walk from the long gallery (south wing of
Master's House) to the Porter's Lodge, he had given
everything away to Barker. Alva, at his first interview
with him, believed him to be an English spy, since no one
would entrust a conspiracy to such a fool.
It was Queen Elizabeth's good fortune to have in William
Cecil a man who was more than a match for ninety-nine
out of every hundred conspirators who have ever tried
to shake a throne. It was even more her good fortune
that, of the conspirators who tried to shake her throne,
ninety-nine out of every hundred were inferior in quali-
fication to most men who undertake such tasks.
Here was Ridolfi, a hot-tempered, blatant fool. Ross,
a man of high ability, but outwitting himself by inventing
clever lies while Cecil had the truth in his pocket. Norfolk,
with little or nothing of the stuff in him of which good
conspirators are made. He was too good, carrying always
some lingering scruple for effective treason — not good enough
to cast the treason away. He had, moreover, an unbounded
132 THE FOURTH DUKE OF NORFOLK
belief in his own fortune, and, worse still for him, a greater
belief in his own popularity as making ultimate catastrophe
impossible. A strange conspirator this who leaves a ruinous
letter " under the matte " of his study for a whole year,
forgetting it was there because he had " given orders
that it should be burned." And these three men, with a
plot so desperate on hand, had accomplices great and small,
enough to wreck any scheme that this talkative world
has ever had taste of.
First of all there were privy to it of the great ones
of earth, in Scotland, Holland, Rome, and Spain, Mary,
Alva, Pope Pius V, Philip II, and all the ears and tongues
that gathered around them, together with some scores
of English malcontents — Ridolfi put it down at two score,
of whom Norfolk stood as 40 in the cipher. And there
were the Ambassadors of Spain and France with some
of their servants, and at least half a dozen of the Duke's
own retainers at Charterhouse, let alone the other servants
of the place, all of whom probably could have told a tale
had it been really needed.
And with this mixed crew of Emperors and Popes and
Governors and Nobles and Secretaries and agents, and
" raskall fellows," as the Commissioner Wylson called them,
Norfolk dreamed that he could carry out a plot which
needed secrecy and swiftness, and action without talk.
CHAPTER XIV
AT this point I must say a few words about the lesser
actors in the great tragedy — men who lived inside Charter-
house at the moment and whose confessions, obtained in
the Tower, are to those who know the buildings of Charter-
house, full of a picturesque reality which enable us to follow
the very footsteps of the men who made the history of
England for a year or two, as they walked from court to
court and room to room.
Robert Higford was a confidential secretary to Norfolk.
We know nothing of his earlier life, nor much about him
save that which the Confessions tell us. After his master's
death he was also put upon his trial and condemned to
death. I am unable to find that the execution was carried
out.
William Barker was a second secretary. He seems
to have been the type of the impecunious, travelled
" pedant " (in the old sense of his day). He was educated at
Cambridge. In a letter which he wrote for mercy to Queen
Elizabeth he speaks of having received benefits from her
at Cambridge, which looks like Emmanuel College. He
travelled in Italy, and had met and associated at Siena with
Sir Thomas Hoby, the translator of II Cortigiano. He was
himself a versifier, and in an age when most educated men
could do something decent in that sort, he produced,
when at Charterhouse, some villainous stuff which the
wily Ross had asked him for on behalf of his mistress,
and which Mary, with no less wiliness, in a letter to Barker,
thanked him for, declaring that she liked it well. Barker,
133
134 THE RIDOLFI PLOT
in his confession, with some pride quoted the only stanza
he could remember. We shall, perhaps, require no more —
" Whan thow hast felt what Fortune ys
And fownd her firme to few,
Thy Trade in Truth and Fayth parformyd
Shall clere all clowdy skew."
" Some more verses ther were," adds the poet, " which
I do not remember. He [Ross] at his being with the
Quene of Scotts shewid her the Rime, and told her more
of me ; wherefore she wrote a Letter of Thanks to me and
the Letter maketh Mention of Mr. Banester and Cantrell."
If this poor vain fellow had done no more than write
this stuff it had been well, but it is clear that Norfolk,
with his usual recklessness, had made him privy to much
of the most dangerous import while he trusted him but
little. " I would sooner," said the Duke at his trial, " have
trusted one Banastre than fifteen Barkers." Of his fate
we have no record. No man's testimony did so much,
perhaps, to bring Norfolk to the scaffold.
The Lawrence Banastre or Banester, of whom the Duke
spoke, was a man of apparently a higher type. A Justice
of the Peace for his county (possibly Shropshire), and so
far as can be seen, though by no means without knowledge
that his master was plotting, yet unacquainted with the
details of his plot. Indeed, he claimed to know so little
that he was put upon the rack, which Higford and Barker
escaped, but with no better result. We hear of him
long after Norfolk's death, through a lease, as living in
a house in the square adjacent to Charterhouse, or even
forming a part of it.
Of the other servitors we hear of a Scotsman, John
Syncleer, alias Gardner, he being the gardener of Howard
House. Taken to the Tower and questioned, he produced a
tale which the Commissioners dismissed in their report as
" alehowse bablyng such as is common with such raskalls,"
and after a season in Cold Harbour they sent him back
to his vegetables. He had been ten years in the Duke's
service, and seventeen years later, at the attainder of Philip
THE SERVANTS OF HOWARD HOUSE 185
Earl of Arundel, he was still caretaker of the House and
Tennis Court * at Howard House, and a lease of the year
1580 made him tenant of a narrow strip of soil on the
west side of Charterhouse Square, where he set up a bowling
alley to the annoyance of the fashionable inhabitants
of the square, by reason of the " evill disposed " persons
who resorted thither. On one occasion Mr. Syncleer's
patrons took the opportunity of the owner's absence to
loot the house of Sir Christopher Wray, the Lord Chief
Justice, who lived in the square close to the obnoxious
bowling alley.
Of Lyggons, " the Duke's man " who often brought
in Ross, we find nothing in shape of a confession. Nor
from Chaplain Sewell, who had bribed Sir Henry Neville's
footman, Richard, to carry letters for Norfolk; nor yet
of William Cantrell, mentioned in Queen Mary's letter
to Barker; nor yet of Sharpe, "My Lord's Grome" ; nor of
Symminges, " the Yoman of the Cellar" ; nor even of poor
Nell the faithful. The treason talked in the Servants'
Hall was classed, doubtless, with the " aylehowse bablyng "
of the gardener. Sir Nicholas Lestrange, Norfolk's Cham-
berlain, was completely absolved.
I shall now allow the Confessions of Norfolk and Ross,
of Banastre, Barker, and Higford, with the letters of
Ridolfi, of Alva, and of Mary Stuart to tell, in the main,
their own story so far as it concerns Howard House.
Ross, in his Confessions in the Tower, gave a full descrip-
tion of many visits to Howard House. He tells, too, of
coming to dine with Lawrence Banastre at his Chamber
in the Duke's House. He tells of the perpetual messages
which passed between Norfolk and Mary, and, above all,
of an episode in the Long Gallery, so picturesque that I
quote it in full : —
" The sayd examinate [Ross] sayeth that the Tuesday
before the Duke went to Kenninghale, after Supper abowte
* The Tennis Court became, after 1611, under transformation
the house used for Gownboys, from which a portion cut off in the
early nineteenth century became the Head Master's boarding house,
afterwards " Saunderites."
136 THE RIDOLFI PLOT
seven of the clock Lyggons mett hym at the grett Gate of
Haward Howse by Apoyntemente and conducted him by
the Back-Court of the Howse, and brought hym into
the Gallerye next to the Churcheyard att which Tyme
the Duke was in his Bedde-Chamber, as Lyggons sayed,
with the Lord Lumley, and soo tarrynge a while till the
Lord Lumley was gone the Duke came into the sayd
Gallery * to this examinate. The cause of this Examinate's
comynge was for that Robynson had brought the Duke
a Token from the Quene of Scotts which as he remem-
breth was a Rynge and delyvered the same without any
Letter before this Examinate knewe thereof; before
which Tyme Bortycke [Borthwick one of Mary Stuart's
Gentlemen] brought a Cushyn wrought with the Quene' s
own Armes and a Devyse upon it, with this sentence
VIRESCIT VULNERE VIRTUS and a Hand with a Knyfe
Cutting down the Vines as they use in the Sprynge Tyme ;
al which Work was made by the Scottish Quene' s own
Hand."
The Attorney-General made capital of this " Cushyn "
at the trial : —
" You received," he said, " in Charterhouse Letters,
Messages, and Tokens from the Scottish Quene. You
received from her a Brooch [this curious error passed
unnoticed] with a hand cutting down a Vine and this
Posie ' Virescit Vulnere Virtus.' But my Lord do Green
Vines grow where they be cut ? And a green Vine it was."
Banastre [Sept. 30, 1571] spoke to two rings set with
diamonds, one valued at 20/. the other at [blank] which
Norfolk sent to the Queen of Scots. He it was too who
told how, by Norfolk's order, he had left open " the dore
of his logyng which hath a Bakdore in the Duke's House,"
so that the Bishop of Ross might pass through without
his having to see him.
He told, moreover — and here again we have one of
those picturesque touches which make the story live
again for us — how, when Norfolk came from the Tower,
he, Banastre, handed him " Seven Handkerchefs a par
* This is the Gallery which still exists ; though now divided
into chambers partly in the Master's Lodge and partly in the Regis-
trar's House.
INTERVIEWS IN LONG GALLERY 137
of writing tables and a little tablett of gold whereon was
sett Queen Mary's portrat." What became of these
pretty love tokens ?
William Barker's evidence was far more damaging.
He told (Oct. 10, 1571) how he had twice admitted
Ridolfi to interviews in the Long Gallery — Norfolk stoutly
asserted there had been but one. The first time, he
says, was about eight of the clock one evening in Lent
last, when he " did bringe Ridolphi Secretlye to the
Duke where Ridolphi did talke with the Duke in his
Gallarye half an hower and more." It was on this occasion
that the short walk from Gallery to Porter's Gate sufficed
to create one more witness to the Treason. Barker is
precise in his description : —
" The first Tyme I brought him up on the Back Side
by the long Workhouse at the furder end of the
Lavendry Cort. So up a new Payer of Stayers that goeth
up to the old wardrobe and so thoroughe the Chamber
where my Lady Lestrange [wife of Norfolk's Chamberlain]
used to dine and suppe. The second Tyme I brought
him up at the Stayers of the entry that goeth to Sir Henry
Neville's Chamber and down agayne that way."
We can identify the route tolerably well. He was
taken in at the door of the Slype, now the Manciples'
passage which adjoins the long workhouse (now divided
up into smaller workshops) in the west wing of Washhouse
Court. He was led, it must seem, across the Master's
Court to the corner where a door in the north wing opened
on the Great Staircase, newly built. For there is no
other staircase to which the term " payer of stayers,"
used literally in that day, could apply. The old ward-
robe was, perhaps, a cloak room at or near the lobby off
the Great Staircase to the right, which gives access to the
upper rooms of the Preacher's House and of the Master's
Lodge. It was through the latter (the east wing) that
Ridolfi must have been led to meet the Duke, who came
from his Bed Chamber (to-day the Registrar's Drawing-
room) into the Long Gallery in the south wing. We are
138 THE RIDOLFI PLOT
told in another Confession how Barker withdrew into a
window while Ridolfi talked with the Duke.
With regard to the second interview, for which Barker
says he let Ridolfi in by the Stayers of the entry to Sir
Henry Neville's Chamber, I am inclined to believe that,
as I have already said, Sir Henry Neville had his quarters
in what is now the Preacher's House, and that the very
interesting Staircase which leads down to what was formerly
the Garden or Bowling-green of Howard House (once
the Great Cloister) was that which is here mentioned by
Barker.
Norfolk's own confession corroborates the main fact
of one interview with Ridolfi, while it denies the second.
Whether the result came from one interview or two, its
nature is undoubted. Norfolk entered freely into the
plan by which he was to raise a force of men in the Eastern
Counties to co-operate with a landing of 10,000 of Alva's
troops at Harwich. The Queen of Scots was to take the
place of Elizabeth on the English throne.
Norfolk seems to have held the fatuous idea that so
long as he did not actually sign any of these compromising
documents he was safe, no matter what amount of approval
he might have bestowed upon them by word of mouth.
That night, however, Ridolfi went away and forthwith
wrote out three similar reports * of the Duke's complete
assent to the scheme, for Alva, Philip, and Pius V, and in
a day or two had started for the Netherlands, where he
handed Alva his report.
As we have said, Alva thought him a babbler and said
so, but he none the less approved the plan and grasped the
detail to its full value. To Philip he wrote quite clearly : —
" Your Majesty understands. The Queen being dead —
naturally or otherwise — dead or else a prisoner, there will
be an opportunity which we must not allow to escape.
The first step must not be taken by us ... but we may
tell the Duke that those Conditions being first fulfilled
he shall have what he wants."
* Two of these letters exist: one in Italian in the Vatican, the
other in Spanish, lately at Simancas, but now removed to the National
Archives of Madrid.
THE RIDOLFI PLOT 139
Apparently anxious to justify Alva's opinion of him
as a fool, Ridolfi at once wrote in cipher three similar
letters to Ross, Norfolk, and Lumley, enclosing all three
in one packet to Ross with the key of the cipher enclosed.
Then he set forth with his other copy of the report for
Pius V, and reaching Rome in May, passed thence in June
to Madrid, where Philip at once summoned a Cabinet
Council which cheerfully decided on the murder of Elizabeth,
and appointed Chapin Vitelli, at his own request, to do
the deed.
Meanwhile Ridolfi's packet to Ross had gone on its
way by the hand of Charles Bailly, the unhappy creature
whose piteous lament is still to be seen carved on the walls
of the Tower. He fell into the hands of Cecil's spies.
His precious packet was opened by Lord Cobham, who,
won over by his brother, sent merely the bag with seditious
books in it to Cecil and passed the cipher letters on to Ross.
The latter substituted other letters in the same cipher of
no very dangerous hue, and passed them on. But Bailly
under the rack, and by means of a clever trick, was presently
induced to tell the secret of the true contents of the letter.
Once more Cecil, that " fox of infinite cunning " as Guerau
called him, knew more than any single conspirator of them
all, and Norfolk was in his net.
But the Ridolfi business was not all. The French
Ambassador and the Spanish, in London, while seeking
in their master's interest to undermine each other, sought
also to undermine Elizabeth.
The French Ambassador, de La Mothe Fenelon, lived
in Charterhouse Square. One day he received from Mary's
supporters in France a sum of 300 French gold crowns
and 300 English angels. He sent them through to Norfolk
in Charterhouse. His servant delivered the bag to Barker
" in the chapel " (an interesting fact which shows that
the chapel, if ever used as a Banquet Hall,* had been
so only for a time), and the latter carried them through
to Higford. Norfolk, with his usual neglect of detail,
bade him despatch the bag to his agent (Banastre), then in
* See Maurice Chauncy's account.
140 THE RIDOLFI PLOT
Shropshire, for conveyance to Lord Herries, on behalf
of Mary, and enclosed letters therewith in cipher. With
incredible carelessness Higford entrusted the bag to a
merchant called Brown, travelling to Shrewsbury, saying that
it was fifty pounds in silver for the payment of his Lord's
tenants. Brown, having some knowledge of the weight
of coins, thought it heavy — opened it, found the letters,
and returned to Cecil, who at once summoned Robert
Higford to decipher the letters. Higford prevaricated
awhile, then, under fear of the rack, declared that the
alphabet to the cipher " was left under the matte hard
by the wyndowes syde in the entrye towards my Lord's
Bed Chamber wheare the Mappe of England doth hang
whereof I made my Lord pryvie." * Meanwhile, from
memory, he deciphered the letters and once more Norfolk's
guilt was proved.
But when the messengers in hot haste reached Charter-
house and made search beneath the " matte," the alphabet
had been " gotten away." But they found instead a
letter to Norfolk from Queen Mary — which Norfolk declared
had lain there near upon a year. " I bid," said Norfolk
at his trial, " that letter should be burned." " God would
not have it so," was the Attorney-General's reply.
Norfolk, not knowing what had happened, repeated his
tale of the fifty pounds for his tenants to the Commissioners,
Sir Thomas Smith and Doctor Wilson, who came to Charter-
house to examine him. Cecil, on learning this, at once
went to Elizabeth, who ordered Norfolk to the Tower.
Sir Ralph Sadler, who carried out the order, wrote on
Sept. 7, 1571, to Elizabeth of his action on the previous
day, telling how he came to the Duke about three of the
afternoon and
" so having prepared a Fotecloth Nag for him, I Sir Rauf
Sadler, on the one side and Sir Thomas Smith on the other
* We can identify this spot in the Duke's privie chamber or
study to within a few feet. The room, sadly shorn of all traces
of antiquity, is still in existence on the first floor at the north end
of the west wing of the Master's Court. The text of the letter from
Queen Mary will be found in Wright's History of Scotland. Probably
the original exists, but I am unable to trace it.
NORFOLK'S ARREST AND TRIAL 141
side and I Doctor Wilson coming immediately after with
only our servants and friends accompanied he was betwixt
four and five of the Clock quietly brought into the Tower
without eny Truble save a Nomber of idle raskall People,
Women, Men, Boyes and Girles runnyng about him,
as the Manner is, gasyng at him."
And so in this sorry procession Thomas Howard passed
out of the Gatehouse of Howard House for the last time.
The missing key to the cipher was yet to find. Norfolk
himself gave the clue. Sir Thomas Smyth writes thus
to Burghley on Sept. 21, 1751 : —
" With talking with the Duke heretofor and charging
him that he had the Cifer which we missed and which
should lie under the Matte, he cast out a word and said
that Higforth's memory might faile ; yt had ben, and
might lie bewixte tiles. We called Higforth before us.
At the first he said that was before the House was full
buylded, now it was ceeled there, and toke it surely to be
under the Matte. Yet after a night he remembered
himself but he could not so demonstrate it that any man
might fyend it. If he went by hymself he doubted not
to fyend it if it were there. Whereupon I, Dr Wilson,
went this day with hym and one of the Tower his keper
to Haward House and founde it indede betwixt two tiles
in the Roof so hid as it had not bene possible to have founde
it otherwise than by unrypping all the Tiles except one had
been well acquainte with the Place."
The rest is soon told. On Jan. 16, Westminster Hall
was prepared with all the pomp and splendour which was
fit to usher in the trial of the premier Peer of England.
Other satisfaction than that Norfolk could have hardly
found in the manner of his trial. Utterly repugnant in
its methods to our later views of justice, it was yet in its
day neither better nor worse than that which was measured
out to men on trial of life and death. Norfolk applied to
be heard by counsel. The point of law was referred to
the Chief Justice Sir James Dyer (Norfolk's neighbour
in Charterhouse Square). Dyer decided that by the law
142 THE RIDOLFI PLOT
of England a prisoner accused of treason could not be heard
by counsel. What purports to be a verbal record of the
trial is extant.* The Attorney of the Wards made rhetori-
cal statements to the peers rather than examined, and brow-
beat the prisoner in the manner of that day. Only one
witness was produced in court. The Confessions of
Archbishop Ross, Bailly, Higford, Banastre, and Barber
were read in court, but no cross-examination — the merest
amateur can see where such was needed — was possible.
It is true, as we know now, that Cecil had evidence enough
behind the scenes to have convicted ten times over. And
doubtless the consciousness of this paralysed the Duke's
defence. The trial lasted all day, and as the Hall darkened
the Lords gave in their verdict of guilty.
Four weeks or so later the scaffold was built one day
on Tower Hill ready for its work next morning. But
Elizabeth withdrew the warrant which she had signed,
and next day, Feb. 11, the crowd who had gathered to see
Norfolk die, had to be content with two victims of small
interest. All that spring Cecil brought pressure to bear
in vain, but at last a joint petition of Lords and Commons
forced the reluctant Queen once more to sign the death
warrant. In Burghley's diary, under June 2, occurs this
entry : " The Duke of Norfolk suffred." On the scaffold
he declared to the people that he had always been a
Protestant since he had known what religion meant. It
was a point on which men might well have doubted. And
so passed out of sight the fourth Duke of Norfolk, and a
notable chapter in the History of Charterhouse, which for
the time had become the History of England itself, was
closed.
* The Trial of the Duke of Norfolk. Joseph Brown, 1709.
t The Duke was buried, with more honour than was often given
to the victims of the axe, in St. Peter's Chapel of the Tower, where
his two cousins, Anne Boleyn and Katharine Howard, already lay.
In that same chapel no less than three owners of Charterhouse found
rest, John Dudley Earl of Northumberland, Thomas Howard, and
his son Philip Earl of Arundel.
CHAPTER XV
HOWARD HOUSE UNDER PHILIP EARL OF ARUNDEL
PHILIP HOWARD was the eldest son of Thomas Howard,
fourth Duke of Norfolk by his first wife, the Lady Mary Fitz-
alan, daughter of Henry Fitzalan, twelfth Earl of Arundel.
He was born at Arundel House,* his grandfather's Mansion
in the Strand, on June 28, 1557, and his mother, the last
of the Fitzalans, dying less than two months after his
birth, he seems to have remained in Arundel House, and
to have been there brought up, as presently were his step-
brothers, Thomas and William (the " Belted Will " of Sir
Walter Scott). Their country home was probably Kenning-
hall. Philip II stood godfather to Philip Howard, for
whom presently a tutor was found in one Martin Gregory
of St. John's Oxford, a man of strong Romanist tendencies,
who later crossed over to Douai and died there.
When Philip was a few months under twelve he was
betrothed to Anne Dacre, also twelve years old, who was
Norfolk's ward, the daughter of his third wife Elizabeth
Lady Dacre. The pair were formally married — the MS.f
calls it " married a second time " — two years later when
each was fourteen. This match at first was nothing
happier than most of such miserable arrangements common
in that day. Philip Howard was about fifteen years old
* Arundel House, of which all trace has disappeared, stood
over several acres of ground slightly to the west of a line drawn
from St. Clement Danes (where Mary Fitzalan was buried) to the
river. The name is preserved in Arundel Street.
t A MS. at Arundel, which was published by the thirteenth Duke
of Norfolk, is my authority for this and several other statements con-
cerning the life of Philip Howard. It is thought to have been written
by the Confessor of Anne (Dacre), Philip's wife.
143
144 PHILIP EARL OF ARUNDEL
at his father's execution, and his uncle, Lord William
Howard, took charge of him and of his stepbrothers. He
was sent to Cambridge, to St. John's, where, not being
a youth of strong character, he is said by his biographer
to have been idle and dissipated. From Cambridge, there-
fore, he brought back little that was useful, unless the
degree of M.A. given " without the usual exercises " can
be so counted, and once more in London he at once began
to live the life of the courtier about town. He had in-
herited from his father, Norfolk, and his grandfather,
Surrey, a full share of their love of magnificence. The
estates of Norfolk had descended to him by an entail,
and though condemnation for treason cancelled all entail
and the estates were forfeit to the Crown, Elizabeth seems
to have waived that claim, though she did not allow him
to assume the title of the Duke of Norfolk. He was, for
the present, merely Earl of Surrey by courtesy. We find
him, however, in the year 1578, at the age of twenty-
one, entertaining the Queen at Kenninghall in Norfolk,
and a little later, Elizabeth being on a progress in those
parts, he entertained her at his Palace at Norwich, keeping
open house to all the nobles and gentlefolk of the county
in fashion so sumptuous that it is said to have left him
seriously in debt.
All this time he was neglecting his young wife Anne, who
lived alone in the country while he kept court at Arundel
House. The Arundel MS. tells us that when she came
to town she had lodgings in Charterhouse. But in 1580,
the Earl of Arundel died and Philip Howard succeeded
to his title and to his estates. He was, in 1581, " restored
in blood," but still without Norfolk's titles, and at the
same time he and his wife came together and lived at
Arundel House. She was a woman of strong character
and religious feeling, and her influence with her husband
became great. In 1582 she joined the Roman Church,
making no secret of it. Elizabeth in wrath sent her down
to the charge of Sir Thomas Shirley at Wiston in Sussex
for a year. She was kindly treated, but strictly guarded,
and there she gave birth to her only daughter. Meanwhile,
PHILIP EARL OF ARUNDEL 145
strange rumours were flying about London with reference
to Philip Howard. In 1583, Elizabeth announced her
intention of visiting him at Arundel House,* it is easy to
guess why. The self-invited guest liked well of her enter-
tainment, we are told, but perhaps saw there things which
confirmed her suspicions. A month or so later Arundel
and his stepbrother, William Howard, had orders to con-
sider themselves prisoners in Arundel House. This con-
finement lasted, Arundel says in a letter to the Queen,
for fifteen weeks, during which he and his officials were
several times severely questioned. In 1584, Arundel
was secretly received into the Roman Church by Father
William Weston, but remained about the person of Eliza-
beth until in April, 1585, he resolved to fly the country,
and had actually sailed on a vessel from Littlehampton
when he was overtaken and arrested. Brought before the
Star Chamber he was charged with that offence, with
communicating with Mary Stuart, and with seeking to
assume the Norfolk title. No trial followed, but he
was committed to the Tower and fined £10,000. Once
only did he leave it in all the rest of his life. In 1588,
when the Spanish Armada was coming up the Channel,
he and one or two others in the Tower met in his prison in
the Beauchamp Tower and there heard mass, which was
followed by twenty-four hours of intercession. William
Bennett, the priest who had celebrated, under fear of torture
confessed that the mass of the Holy Spirit and the prayers
which followed had been for the success of the Spaniards.
Arundel wholly denied this, explaining that there was a
rumour in London that all Romanists were to be massacred.
The mass, he said, was for his own safety and for that of
his fellows. Bennett, in a letter to Arundel full of remorse-
ful apology, declared that he had merely confessed what-
ever he thought would please best ; but at the later trial
he was produced and did not withdraw his confession.
On April 14, 1589, Arundel, splendidly attired, and bearing
* Mr. Taylor makes this a visit to Charterhouse. The Arundel
MS. is, however, quite clear on the point. And there is no evidence
that Arundel himself ever lived in Charterhouse.
146 PHILIP EARL OF ARUNDEL
himself proudly to the annoyance of his judges, it is said,
appeared in Westminster Hall under an act of attainder
and was condemned to death — the fourth in direct line from
and including the third Duke of Norfolk in Henry VIII's
reign who had lain under such sentence, his father and
grandfather having actually suffered death.* He was
taken back to his prison in the Beauchamp Tower, but was
never led forth to Tower Hill. His imprisonment, however,
was made a very sad one. Elizabeth hated him. Perhaps
she remembered how his grandfather Arundel had once
told her to her face that if she tried to govern England
with her caprices the nobility would have to interfere.
Perhaps the letter which Philip Howard himself had written
on the eve of his flight from Littlehampton rankled in
her mind. He had told her, amongst many other things,
with no small indiscretion, for he could certainly not have
been aware of the truth, that his father had died innocent
of all disloyal mind, and that even his worst enemies now
admitted it. But whatever the cause, he was treated
with harshness in the Tower. His only son was born
in 1586, soon after his committal, but he was allowed to
see neither wife nor child. And when in 1595 death drew
near and he asked to say farewell to wife and children, even
at that moment it was denied him unless he would con-
sent to go to church. As he lay dying he uttered a digni-
fied and pathetic appeal to the Lieutenant of the Tower,
Sir Michel Blount : " You must think, Mr. Lieutenant, that
when a prisoner comes hither to this Tower that he bringeth
sorrow with him. On them do not add affliction to
affliction." He died at the age of thirty-seven, and was
buried near his unhappy kinsfolk and predecessors in mis-
fortune in the Chapel of St. Peter's of the Tower, but
in 1624 was moved thence to the Chancel of the Parish
Church of Arundel.
The tenure by which he had held Howard House was,
as I have said, evidently one of permission, the Queen
K Three owners of Charterhouse as a mansion, Northumberland,
Norfolk, Arundel, were sentenced to death.
THE PORTUGUESE AMBASSADOR 147
not insisting on the forfeiture of the estates, which de-
scended to him by entail. I can, however, find no evidence
that he ever himself used it as his Town House. During
the whole of his tenure, which lasted from 1572 to his own
attainder, 1589, we learn from the report of the jury
appointed to return a valuation of Charterhouse on its
forfeiture to the Crown, that John Sincleere, the shrewd
Scotch gardener of Howard House, whose feigned stupidity
had once served him so well in the Tower, was caretaker
of the mansion. The deed by which he was appointed
dates from the time of Norfolk and throws an interesting
side light on a critical moment of the Duke's affairs. It
is dated August 12, 1569.* That was a week or two only
before Norfolk's last interview with Elizabeth, and six
weeks before his fatal flight from the Court. It is easy
to see that in taking the strange step of appointing a
legalised custodian of Howard House he did so under a
strong sense of the events which were impending, and
which might — as indeed they did — make him a stranger to
Howard House for many a long day. The deed appointing
Sincleere as custodian could not, of course, be thought
to have any effect at all in staving off the forfeiture as has
been suggested.
Philip Howard seems to have used Ai'undel House,
as we have said, in the life of his grandfather as his place
of resort in London. And Charterhouse was let from
1573 for some years onwards to the Portuguese Ambassador.
It comes before us from a most picturesque episode in 1576,
which once more gives local details of the Master's
Lodge. The Portuguese Ambassador was in the habit
of having mass celebrated there, and it came to be known
that Englishmen resorted to it. One Sunday at 11 o'clock
the Recorder of London with Sheriff Kimpton and Sheriff
Barnes appeared with a handful of followers before the
Porter's Lodge. The Porter, " being a Portugal, a testy
little wretch," says the Recorder, showed fight and shut
the Recorder's leg, to his great pain, in the Great Gates,
* The actual deed is not extant so far as I know. But it is
quoted as bearing date August 12, 1569.
148 PHILIP EARL OF ARUNDEL
whence it was rescued by Mr. Sheriff Kimpton. The
party forced its way in and, crossing the little triangular
Entrance Court, went into the entrance " Hal," * all doors
being open, and up the stairs. At the stair-head there
was a Long Gallery (now divided off into separate rooms
in the Master's and Registrar's Houses) that, in length,
stood east and west. In the same Gallery all the mass-
hearers were standing, for the priest was at the gospel,
and the altar candles were lighted, as the old manner was.
The presence of the intruders soon became known, and
thereupon ensued a scene so wild that the Spanish Am-
bassador who was present (this probably means Antonio
de Guarras, presently to be mentioned) afterwards made
furious protest to the Queen upon the breach of an Ambassa-
dor's privilege. The Queen, says Strype, " was so com-
plaisant " as to order the Recorder to be committed.
The Portuguese Ambassador, called the Seigneur
Giraldo or Giraldi, was still not satisfied. A special
messenger with apologies was sent down to him on board
his ship, he, as it happened, being on the eve of a visit to
his home. And meanwhile the Privy Council ordered
an inquiry to which the Recorder should furnish a full
account. It is from his very minute report that the
following description is framed. The Recorder having
entered the Long Gallery with his party, the mass-hearers
all turn round. He summons all Englishmen to come out.
All the strangers (foreigners) make a rush at him, some
with rapiers drawn, some with daggers. Two bailiff's
" errants " of Middlesex draw their swords, which at Mr.
Recorder's order are at once sheathed. There is a general
melde, " and then Mr. Sheriff Kimpton with all the Mass-
hearers with Seigneur Giraldie's Wife and her Maids were
all in a Heap, forty persons at once speaking in several
languages."
* This Hal must have been a lobby, probably on the west of
the portal where the Registrar's office now is, since the stair by which
they ascended (an outside stair with, doubtless, entrance from both
floors internally, of which a fragment remains) opened on to the
end of the Long Gallery. There was another outside staircase opening
nearer the middle. The Long Gallery has already figured in the visits
of Ross and Ridolfi.
SCENE IN THE LONG GALLERY 149
From this polyglot mass the gallant Recorder extricates
the Ambassador's wife, and kissing his hand, in what,
presumably, he took to be the Spanish manner, he led her
by the hand out of the press to her chamber door, and there
makes " a most humble Cursey unto her." And then
performing the same gallant service to the gentlewomen,
he returns to the Long Gallery and with his colleagues
begins to question, first allowing the men of the house-
hold to depart, which they do, using such " lewd and
contumelious words " that Mr. Recorder is glad his men
do not understand them.
The strangers not of the household are less amenable
still, till Mr. Recorder says, " Very well, then, they must all
go to prison." Whereon, cap in hand, they become
submissive and are dismissed, the Englishmen alone being
arrested. At this moment a mild practical joke is played
on the energetic Mr. Kimpton. The " Mass sayer " had
stood quietly at the north end of the altar during all this
scene. The altar must have been at the east end of the
gallery where the landing of the staircase (a modern
insertion) now is. Some one whispers to Kimpton that if
the door at the side (this can only be the door opening into
the present " small drawing-room ") be opened he will
find a number of " mass mongers " inside. The priest
smilingly produces the keys ; the door is opened ; the
eager sheriff enters, to find an empty room.
Defeated on this side issue, but victorious at all the other
points, the party think it time to go. But first they are
led up to see " how trim the altar is," by Don Antonio de
Guarras, who had been the most boisterous of their op-
ponents. This de Guarras was a notable man, the envoy
to London of the Duke of Alva — probably he is " the Spanish
Ambassador " described in the Recorder's report. He
was a noted intriguer, as his surviving letters to Alva
and Philip show, and he took little from his object lesson
this day in Burghley's methods of dealing with Ambassadors
seeing that only a year later he found himself in the Tower,
having been found writing letters of conspiracy to Mary
Stuart. To-day, however, in spite of the provocation
150 PHILIP EARL OF ARUNDEL
received, his Spanish courtesy is with him and he conducts
the Recorder and Sheriffs across the Entrance Court to
the Porter's Lodge, where a well-meant invitation from the
Recorder to come and have some dinner is declined, and so
ends this extraordinary episode so typical of its day and
hour, in England, and so full of local interest in Charter-
house.
I am unable to say how many years Charterhouse
continued to be the residence of the Portuguese Ambassa-
dor. The fact stated by the Arundel MS. that the Countess
of Arundel about this time " had lodgings there " and
occasionally used them when she came to town (her husband
being at Arundel House) does not preclude the possibility,
in so large a mansion, of the Portuguese Ambassador
occupying the main portion. She doubtless ceased to
keep her lodging at Charterhouse upon her reunion with
Arundel after 1570, when Arundel House became their
home, and we have no records from that time to ArundePs
attainder, 1589, to tell us what use the place was put to,
beyond, of course, the record of Sincleere's custody which
covers the whole period. But in the autumn, 1589, a
commission or jury was appointed to survey and report
on Howard House, and also to estimate repairs. These
two documents resulting in 1590 from this inquiry are full
of incidental information, and are of great help in localising
certain features which have since disappeared, and of still
more help in realising the condition at that moment, of
much that still remains. The survey and estimate for
repairs leaves the strong impression of a Great House
which for many years has had little repair and has suffered
from the absence of an owner's eye. It is the kind of result
which one expects from a house which has been let, or has
been in charge of a caretaker who has no authority to
incur great expenses in repair. Thus we read that the
Tarras (Terrace) which leads, we must remember, out of
the chief chambers of the mansion to the Duke's Tennis
Court, and which we know from an inscription on it on
the outside of the West Wall was built in 157? (1570-1571
CONDITION OF THE MANSION, 1590 151
alone possible) was now in 1590, twenty years later,
in such bad repair that the whole of the battlements
along the 263 feet on each side had to be taken down and
rebuilt (incidentally we learn that it is paved with Newcastle
stone). And the square house at the end of Tarras adjoin-
ing the main house (the measurements given enable us
to identify it with the building as we now have it) is in so
bad a state that the top floor * and roof had to be removed.
" The Main House on the N. side towards the Terrace
to be repaired with best of stone being in decaye and plum-
mer's work will cost 50£ and for glazing 10£. The Great
Mansion House to be repaired and tiling glazing creaste
and mending the lead will cost 30£. The coping of the
wall in circuit to be tiled in the decayed places 10£."
All this looks like a house not kept in repair from year
to year, or month to month, and it certainly seems to point
to tenancies such as that of a Portuguese Ambassador
— one can imagine what that might be like in that day —
for a few years, and perhaps no tenant at all for as many
more. It is not to be thought that the buildings could have
come to the state of decay above described in so short a
time on any other supposition.
And, naturally, we should not expect to find any
additions or important changes in Howard House which
we can attribute with any probability to Philip Earl
of Arundel. It may, I think, be taken that the mansion
at his death was, save for the processes of decay and wear,
much the same as it was at the death of his father, Norfolk.
Whether, after the report of the jury in 1590, the
Crown to whom Charterhouse now reverted, undertook
the necessary repairs, cannot be ascertained. Elizabeth
had no fondness for spending money on " repairs " either
for men or ships, or for buildings, and it is possible that the
buildings were left to further dilapidation until they came
into the hands of their next noble occupant, eleven years
later. It is difficult to suppose that those repairs would
* We can to-day see where this was done, the upper portion
having been replaced in red brick. The supply of monastic stone
material had long given out.
152 PHILIP EARL OF ARUNDEL
have been undertaken at the Crown expense and the whole
then left unoccupied for so many years, as we know to have
been the case.
From the attainder of Arundel in 1589 onwards to the
date of his half-brother's tenancy in 1601, the rents of
Charterhouse, such as Whitwell Beech * and houses and
property in Charterhouse Square, were taken over by the
Crown, and all leases made out in Elizabeth's name. In
1593, Edward Morris, gent, of London, was appointed
custodian in place of John Shinkler (so spelt this time),
who had surrendered the agreement by which (from Aug. 12,
1569) he was to hold the post for life. We are not told
what, if any, compensation was made to the old Scottish
gardener ; perhaps he found it in his house and his bowling
green in Charterhouse Square.
In 1595, as we have seen, Philip of Arundel died in
the Tower. The estates by entail should have passed to
his son, Thomas Howard, a boy of some ten years old
who was with his mother, the £ountess Anne, at Arundel
House. This time, however, the attainder had been
allowed to have its full effect, sweeping away all claim
established by entail or aught else.
For the present no assignment of the estate of Charter-
house was made. Nor is any deed found bearing date
earlier than Oct. 29, 1601, when Elizabeth granted Charter-
house to Lord Thomas Howard, the deed ending in these
words : —
" And whereas the said Duke [of Norfolk] was attainted
of high treason (1572) and whereas afterwards Philip
Earl of Surrey and afterwards Earl of Arundel was like-
wise attainted (1589) and whereas said Thomas Lord
Howard Baron of Walden levied a Fine to us and our
successors of all said lands (see Feet of Fines this year
1601) know ye that for the faithful services of said Thomas
Lord Howard Baron of Walden We have granted him
by these presents . . . the said Capital Messuage called
Howard House alias Charterhouse, the orchard and
* Pardon Churchyard and Whitwell Beech, which, as shown in
a previous chapter, were part of Manny's gift, remain part of Charter-
house Clerkenwell estate to this day.
LORD THOMAS HOWARD— CUMBERLAND 153
Garden etc Pardon Church Yard and White Welbech
[Whitwell Beech] To him and his heirs for ever paying us
yearly 822. 0. 0 in two annual portions."
It will thus be seen that for most of the rest of Eliza-
beth's reign Lord Thomas Howard held Charterhouse
not as freehold but as a tenant under the Crown. * The con-
cluding sentences are also important as showing — it has
been denied — that an entail was not recognised as of force
in a case where attainder for treason intervened. It was
not till 1601 that he received it by a grant from the Queen
as a reward for good services. And this grant was renewed
and confirmed by James in 1603.
It is in the last years of ArundeFs life that we find
Charterhouse in the occupation — clearly as a temporary
tenancy of the Crown — of one of the most fascinating
figures of Elizabeth's day, George Clifford, Earl of Cumber-
land. Letters both from himself and his countess show
that from 1593 to 1595 (probably both earlier and later)
they had with their children lived in Howard House.
Sometimes described as a " naval Don Quixote " — the
comparison is only possible to a writer who mistakes both
characters — he was, nevertheless, with all his faults, one
of those chivalrous, erratic, dauntless beings who make
all naval enterprise under Elizabeth into romance. He
had commanded the Elizabeth Bonaventura in the Armada
fights with the greatest gallantry. Then the Queen lends
him the Golden Lion for a South Sea venture — but he took
no gain of money that time. Then came his greatest
voyage, his nearest approach to fortune. He had taken
the Victory with six others, at his own expense, to the
Spanish Main and captured the treasure galleon of the
West Indian Fleet worth £100,000. She became a total
wreck in Mount's Bay, and her treasure lies there awaiting
the day when the sea shall give up her secrets ; and so it
was with all his enterprises. At home a courtier, gambler,
man about town ; at sea, a sailor, a brave gentleman,
unselfish, enduring, but always unlucky.
* In fee-farm.
154 PHILIP EARL OF ARUNDEL
In 1594 he had by the accidental blowing up of their
ship the Cinco Clagas during an engagement taken prisoner
three Spanish grandees, Don Rodrigo Castiliano, Don
Duarte de Sayas, and Don Juan de Sousa, two of whom
he brought to Charterhouse, where they lived nearly a
year in honourable captivity till their ransom should
arrive. Cumberland was a great favourite of Elizabeth,
whose glove set with diamonds he wore ever in his cap.
So we see him in the National Portrait Gallery. Was
it thus he walked these courts ? Was it thus that he
entertained in Howard House, Drake and Manson and
Baskerville and many another of his own kidney ? One
may not stop to imagine pictures, but what material for
them ! It is to the more prosaic evidence of one of his
letters that we must turn. On Sept. 1, 1594, he writes
to Burghley expressing a hope that he will favour my
Lord Tomas [Howard] in his suite.
Sir J. Fortescue " hath dealt with her Maie in it who
after much speche (as he sayeth) concluded not unwillingly
to grant what my Lord desired but in fee-farme." There
can, I think, be no moral doubt that the suit was none
other than a request that Howard House — confiscated
to the Crown by ArundePs attainder and sentence — should
be bestowed on Lord Thomas. Which, in fact, it presently
was after 1595 in " fee-farme " (i.e. tenancy). How long
Cumberland remained in Charterhouse is not known to us.
CHAPTER XVI
HOWARD HOUSE UNDER LORD THOMAS HOWARD,
EARL OF SUFFOLK, 1601-1611
THE new tenant of Charterhouse, destined to be the last
tenant of it in its mansion stage, was the second son, born
in 1563, of the fourth Duke of Norfolk (d. 1572) by his
second wife, Margaret Audley, daughter of Lord Chancellor
Audley, who played his part in the trials of More and
Rochester and many another whose lives were forfeit in
the reign of Henry. His father, on the eve of his execution,
had entrusted him to the care of his half-brother Philip,
aged fifteen, and little enough able to take care even of
himself. It was probably his uncle who looked after the
orphan boys. Lord Thomas Howard went, like Philip, to
Cambridge (St. John's), though, as being younger, at a
later date. His kinsman, Lord Charles Howard of Effing-
ham, had been made Lord High Admiral in 1585, and when
men were waiting for the coming of the fleet of Spain in
1587 the young Howard, at the age of twenty-four, was
with him on the quarter-deck of the flagship the Ark
Royal (late Ark Ralegh], " the one odd ship for all con-
ditions," as her commander wrote of her, and the finest
sailer in the fleet. It is quite possible that Lord Thomas
had already learnt the ropes in some other enterprise,
since we have no knowledge of his doings after his leaving
college. Effingham formed a high opinion of his young
kinsman, and in the spring of 1588 gave him the command
of the Golden Lion, of 500 tons, 250 mariners, and carrying
heavy and light guns. The choice was soon justified. In
155
156 LORD THOMAS HOWARD, EARL OF SUFFOLK
the long day's battle off Portland Bill, on July 23, he showed
great gallantry. The Lion together with the Triumph
(Frobisher), the Mary Rose (Fenton), and two others got
separated from the fleet to leeward and had to fight an
unequal action. They were with difficulty rescued by
the Ark (Effingham), the galleon Leicester (Capt. George
Fennar), the Victory (Drake), the Dreadnought (Beston),
and two others. The wind luckily changing, the twelve
ships seized the chance and bore down upon the Spaniards.
" It may be well said," says the despatch, " that for the
time there never was seen a more terrible value of great
shot nor more hot fight than this was." It was indeed, as
was Gravelines a few days later — though these very names
are forgotten by the average Englishman, — a battle which,
for its value to England, should be counted with the Nile
and Trafalgar. Effingham had a month earlier written
to Walsingham of Lord Thomas Howard and Lord Sheffield,
" I do assure you, Sir, that these two noblemen be most
gallant gentlemen and not only forward but very discreet
in all their doings. I would to God I could say for Her
Majesty's service that there were four such young noble-
men behind to save her." Two days after the Battle of
Portland, when the fleet was off Calais, on July 25,* Lord
Thomas Howard, Lord Sheffield, Roger Townshend,
Martin Frobisher, John Hawkins, and George Beston were
called on board the Ark and there knighted by Effingham
on the quarter-deck. Never has knighthood been better
bestowed.
Lord Thomas was one of Effingham's Inner Council of
War, and his signature appears with those of Drake and
Hawkins, Thomas Fenner, and the others, to the decision
of that Council (to be seen in the British Museum) made
on board the Ark off Calais, to follow the Spanish fleet till
they had put the Firth of Forth to the west of them. In
the fight off Calais, two days after his knighthood, he did
very valiantly and showed that he had fairly earned his
spurs, and so once again in the crowning victory of Grave-
lines. A notice in the Navy reports shows that the Golden
* I find this in the Naval Records also given as July 26.
LORD HOWARD AND THE REVENGE 157
Lion suffered a good deal. In September she had to put
into port to get her mainmast fished, and in November,
the great work being over, she was overhauled and her
inasts pronounced to be " nothing worth," being all
clamped together with iron.
Lord Thomas had marked himself as a born sailor, and
three years after the Armada battles, in 1591, he was in
command of the six ships which were sent to waylay the
Spanish treasure fleet on its return from the Indies. It
was one of those ventures national in name but equipped
by the money of shareholders from Elizabeth downwards,
Ralegh himself owning one entire ship. This time there
were no dividends. The little squadron, waiting off
Flores in the Azores, found itself almost in presence of the
Spanish fleet of over fifty sail, King's ships and armed
merchantmen combined. Lord Thomas weighed anchor
and saved five of his ships, but Sir Richard Grenville in
the Revenge * waited towing off his sick men from on
shore, and all that night and next morning fought that
fight of the one against the fifty-three which will never be
forgotten so long as England takes any pride in her history.
Lord Thomas has been at times reproached for not staying
behind to share Grenville's fate. But it is hardly open to
dispute that in saving his little squadron from an inevitable
disaster he did his duty to his country.
That Elizabeth and Burlegh read it so is clear from
the fact that in 1596 he was set to command one of the
three squadrons, the others being under Essex and Ralegh,
which carried out the siege of Cadiz and the destruction of
the Spanish fleet there. But the feat of all others which
marks best his place amongst English seamen is, perhaps,
the least known and least often recorded. In 1597 f he
was again in command of one of three squadrons, his
colleagues being as before, Essex and Ralegh, who at a
moment of great apparent peril, were sent to assault
* This is, of course, the occasion of Tennyson's well-known
ballad.
t ID the same year he was created Baron Howard de Walden,
and from him descend the recent holders of that title.
M
158 LORD THOMAS HOWARD, EARL OF SUFFOLK
Ferrol and, if possible, once more to destroy the Spanish
fleet in port there. A great storm overtook them. Essex,
brave, but no seaman — a soldier, and not a great one —
succeeded in getting back to Falmouth. Ralegh, never so
practical a seaman as Howard, though gifted with more
imagination, also turned back. But Howard ran his small
squadron through to Ferrol in teeth of the gale. It was a
fine act of seamanship, and though he had to be content
with a challenge to the Adelantado to come out with all
his fleet and fight his little squadron — a challenge which
was gracefully declined — he alone had done what he was
sent for. But it was his last notable feat. He was made
Admiral of the Fleet in 1599 when England was waiting
for the " Invisible Armada " which never came — and then
no more. In Feb., 1601, when Londoners saw the strange
sight of St. Clement Danes tower armed with cannon to
command Essex House, where Essex lay in a state of
siege, Lord Thomas acted as Marshal to the besieging army
with Howard of Effingham in command — a sorry service
for these men of the Armada. He was in the early days
of James, a privy councillor, made Earl of Suffolk in July,
1603, and high in Court favour, which, however, he was
destined to outlive, though to his sagacity the interpreta-
tion of the Gunpowder Plot in 1605 had been mainly due.
To say truth, however, he showed better on sea than on
land, as an Admiral rather than as a Statesman, and above
all on his own quarter-deck rather than on the floor of his
own house. His wife, Mary Dacre, sister of the Countess
of Arundel (for Norfolk had married his three sons to his
three step-daughters and wards) was a masterful and not
too scrupulous a woman. She freely increased her pin
money, not with Suffolk's consent, by supplying informa-
tion to Spain, and perhaps by other means. In 1618
Suffolk was accused of grave doings at the Treasury, and
his wife of taking money from those who had suits to
present. The Star Chamber fined him £30,000, though the
evidence was not conclusive. The fine was presently
reduced to £7000, representing probably the amount of
the Countess' guilt, and Suffolk was restored to office. He
JAMES I. AT CHARTERHOUSE 159
lived to be avenged on Bacon when he took part in the
latter's trial in 1621, and so with some return to his ancient
honours, he spent his last years at Audley End and died
there in 1626, two years after Howard of Effingham, a hale
old man of over eighty, had gone to his haven.
To turn to the direct connection of Lord Thomas
Howard with Charterhouse. I have tried to show, in an
earlier chapter, that we have no deed granting Howard
House to him before 1601 ; and we have no reason to
say that he lived in the mansion before that date.
Elizabeth, who, though she was thought to bear a grudge
against the Howards, had a liking for him as one of her
best admirals and called him " my good Thomas," came
to visit him at Charterhouse (it was her fourth visit in all)
in January of 1603. There is something pathetic in the
picture which rises to the mind of the haggard old woman
— broken hearted, too, if tradition tells true, though there
were men found to doubt if there was a heart to break —
sitting among her courtiers there where she had sat forty-
five years before in the first few days of her Queendom.
Two months later she was dead, and the son of the woman
who had been her lifelong enemy was sitting in that same
hall among the selfsame courtiers. James I used it, as
she had done, as his first resting-place on his coming to
London for four days, from May 7-11. Lord Thomas
had already a few days earlier been made his Chamberlain.
We learn from two accounts how over seventy of the city
fathers, all in velvet gowns and gold chains, met him and
helped to escort him ; how, in order to avoid the dust — it
had been mud at Elizabeth's entry — the Royal party who
came in from Islington by Wood's Close, now Northampton
Street, left the King's highway and rode across the fields,
a thing that may well have troubled his Majesty, who sat
no better on a horse than he did upon a throne, and entered
Charterhouse at the backside, through a vast crowd who
seem to have been very ill-behaved, though boisterously
loyal. The fare was sumptuous, and James, who was a
large eater and drinker, was pleased.
" He was most royal received by the Lord Thomas.
160 LORD THOMAS HOWARD, EARL OF SUFFOLK
Where was such abundance of provisions and all manner
of things that greater could not be : both of rare wild
fowls and many rare and extraordinary banquets to the
great liking of His Majesty and contentment of the whole
train. He lay there four nights (May 7-11, 1603). He
made divers Knights whose names are there."
Thereon follows a list of 133 names of men who received
knighthood on May 11 in the Great Chamber (since called
the Governor's Room).
In July of that same year Lord Thomas Howard was
created Earl of Suffolk. He seems to have sat lightly to
Howard House — perhaps it was too full of ghosts for him ;
and his heart was in his country home at Audley Inn (End),
where, with Thorpe as designer and Bernard Jansen as
decorator, he was turning the old house of Lord Chancellor
Audley into one of the most stately mansions in England.
Perhaps the very costliness of such a task is enough to
explain, without further seeking, why Suffolk became
anxious to find a buyer for his mansion in Charterhouse,
where monarchs were too apt to find a convenient palace
at the expense of their subjects. It happened that at
this time our Founder was looking for a site for his princely
foundation, and on May 9,* 1611, Howard House passed
into the hands of "our munificent Benefactor Thomas
Sutton," f at the price of £13,000, and the second or
Mansion period of Charterhouse came to a close.
* The Charter of James I was signed June 22.
t The Founder's Prayer, still in daily use in Charterhouse
ChapeL
Scale of Feet
r-r "
GENERAL PLAN OP HOWARD HOUSE.
CHAPTER XVU
THE FABRIC OF THE MANSION UNDER NORTH,
NORTHUMBERLAND, AND NORFOLK
THE structural changes by which the buildings of the
later monastery were adapted to the uses of a mansion
were effected mainly during the tenancy of Lord North
and of the fourth Duke of Norfolk, the brief ownership of
the Duke of Northumberland having left no mark upon
the place. There is small difficulty in saying what portion
of the buildings, which are seen to-day, belong to the
entire Mansion period, but owing to the absence of all
documentary record, it is very hard to say what portions
were due to North and what to Norfolk.
It has been shown in the earlier pages of this book that
through the remodelling of the monastic buildings (con-
fined mainly to the parts around the Chapel and Little
Cloister) under Prior Tynbygh (1499-1529), Charterhouse
at the hour of its suppression offered a fine opportunity
for the shaping within it of a Tudor mansion. The buildings
which surrounded the Little Cloister (Master's Court),
consisting mainly of the guest chambers (on the upper
floor) the Prior's quarters, the Refectory (Great Hall) and
kitchen, as well as the Obediences (Washhouse Court) and
other offices, being practically new, needed but little
change to adapt them to the uses of a mansion. What
these changes really were we can only conjecture. It is
clear, however, that North, once in possession in 1545,
soon set to work to shape inside the walls of the Monastery
a mansion which, though it had not the magnificence
which it reached in the days of Norfolk, yet was sumptuous
161
162 THE FABRIC OF THE MANSION
enough to house a queen twice over. At this point I may
for convenience recall one or two facts already mentioned.
The conveyance of Charterhouse from the Crown to
North (Brydges and Hale surrendering their lease) in 1645
describes in detail all the parts of the Monastery, besides
the properties in Charterhouse Square. But it makes no
mention of any mansion or " Capitale Messuagium "
within the monastery. But when North conveys to
Northumberland (1553) the deed, practically the same in
other points, inserts the words " ac totam illam Mansionem
sive capitalem messuagium ac omnia ac singula domos
edificia et struct nuper sedificata."
And here, of course, we have a clear indication, if any
were wanted, that North, in the eight years which had
elapsed since Henry VIII had granted the site to him, had
shaped a mansion around the Little Cloister. When we
come, however, to consider the relative splendour of that
mansion, as it was seen under North and under the Howards,
we find that whereas North in 1564 (the deed became
actual in 1565) sold Charterhouse, with the properties in
Charterhouse Square, to Norfolk for £2200 with £300
additional for Pardon Churchyard, the same property is
sold in 1611, forty-six years later, by Thomas Howard,
Earl of Suffolk, to Thomas Sutton for £13,000. And here
we have the measure of the improvements wrought in
North's original mansion by Norfolk.
Queen Elizabeth, when she paid her first visit to
Norfolk — her third to Charterhouse — doubtless found a
very different mansion from that which had housed her
when she came to it before her coronation.
We may entirely pass over the Church, which seems to
have remained more or less derelict throughout the Mansion
period. I have, however, already pointed out that Maurice
Chauncey's statement that it was used by North as a
dining hall may, if it be correct, possibly be explained by
the fact that structural alterations were being at the time
made to the Refectory (Great Hall) to adapt it to the use
of a Banquet Hall. If this be so then we should have to
attribute the raising of the roof of the Hall in the first
NORTH OR NORFOLK 163
instance to North. That such a change was made is, I
think, beyond doubt. The row of square-headed windows
above the larger windows was inserted in the Mansion
period and represents approximately the addition in height
which was made. A visit to the rafters of the roof, now
concealed from sight by the ceiling above the hammer
beams, leaves on the mind the strong impression of a great
jumble of beams and rafters which resulted from the
heightening of the roof, and had to be concealed by the
ceiling aforesaid. The lower part of the fleche, moreover,
is now buried within the roof, but an examination of it
shows that it has mouldings and arched openings which
were never meant to be hidden, and which were once
external.*
This Hall, now called the Great Hall or Pensioners'
Hall, has also in recent years been christened " the Guesten
Hall." I am not able to trace this name further back than
forty years. It certainly was not known in my own day
at school (1856-64), nor can 1 find any of my contem-
poraries who ever heard the name for it.f It is due to the
belief that the Great Hall represents the Guest Hall of the
Monastery. I cannot share that belief. I can see in the
Great Hall only the Refectory of the Monastery, removed
to this position by Prior Tynbygh. It had previously, as
we learn from the monastery plan, occupied the site in the
Great Cloister where the Brothers' Library is now found. I
am inclined to believe that by Tynbygh's alterations the
original Refectory, which had become too small for the
large number of monks — now often over thirty without
visitors — and became the Lay Brothers' Refectory (it is
common in Charterhouses for the Lay Brothers to occupy
a separate Refectory) while the Monks' Refectory was
rebuilt further to the north. The Great Hall would be by
* I may add that the corbels which support the hammer beams
in the interior of the Hall appear to me now to be in positions with
relation to the windows below which they would not have been
likely to occupy in an original design. But here, I ought to say, I
do not find some distinguished architects in agreement with me.
t Miss Caroline Hale, who spent her youth in Charterhouse up
to 1872, also assures me that she never heard the name.
164 THE FABRIC OF THE MANSION
no means too large for twenty-four to thirty monks, seeing
that it is the custom for the Fathers to sit in Refectory on
one side only of the table, namely that nearest to the wall.
On the other hand, I have never seen — except at Ferrara,
whose circumstances were exceptional — any Charterhouse
which possessed a Guest Chamber on so large a scale. It
is far more probable that the guests, who could never have
been so numerous as to need a very large Hall, took their
meals in large upper rooms in the guests' quarters.
Here I may mention a tradition which exists at Charter-
house that the Duke of Norfolk set back the east wing of
the mansion (in Masters' Court) some fifteen feet to the
east. I am unable to trace the source of this tradition.
If the tradition is sound a glance at the general plan, and
at the existing buildings, makes it evident that in such
case the original west front of the east wing of the Little
Cloister must have been in a line with the west wall of the
Cloister Arcade, and many further suggestions become
possible in such a view. We must, however, be content
to merely mention the tradition for what it is worth.
The oriel window of the Great Hall which projects
into Masters' Court was probably no part of the Refectory
but was added by North or Norfolk. It once projected
much further into the Court, but in the eighteenth century
it was pulled down and the window was replaced in a
much shorter bay. Above the arch which unites the bay
with the Main Hall, on the south front, are the words
" Think and Thank." Owing to the angle of sight these
words are quite invisible now from below. But their
position shows that the bay must once have been of
considerable length,* since on no other condition could
the inscription have been seen.
* One of the coats of arms preserved in the window of the bay
is that of the protector Somerset (d. 1547). If we could assume
that this piece of glass had been in this window from the first, and
had been merely replaced when the bay was rebuilt, we could, of
course, only attribute the bay to North. Tn any case the existence
of this coat of arms in Charterhouse must be due to the fact that
Somerset was, with North, one of the Council of Trustees for carrying
on the Government in the early years of the reign of Edward VI.
There were probably other armorial bearings which have perished.
THE SCREEN IN GREAT HALL 165
We are safe, perhaps, in assigning the long gallery
which runs east and west on the north side of the Hall
to Norfolk. It seems to be of the same date as the
great staircase outside, and was evidently made to be an
easy means of communication between the rooms in the
west wing (where the Duke's privie chamber or study was)
and those in the east wing, without the necessity of passing
through the Great Chamber (Governor's Room). The gallery
originally led directly from the landing of the great staircase
to a door (now closed) which gave access to the lobby.
But at this point arises a question of some interest.
An examination of the points of junction between the
great screen and this long gallery shows that the two were
not part of one original design. There has been much
cutting and adapting of the screen to get it into its place,
and the methods used for that end cannot be called at all
happy. It will be seen that the two consoles on the right
of the screen have been shifted each a little to the left and
no longer rest on the capitals below. The panel on the
extreme right in the music gallery has been entirely sacri-
ficed to the gangway opening and has disappeared ; and
there are other signs of adaptation and dislocation which
show that this screen and music gallery were added at a
later period than the long east and west gallery.
The screen has on its frieze shields which bear the
initials T. N. 1571, the year, we shall remember, when
Norfolk was a prisoner in his own home. He seems to
have employed his time in making Howard House more
magnificent. It is, however, evident that this screen with
its upper music gallery was not designed for its place, but
was imported by the Duke either from one of his many
houses or from some other source. Though its effect in
its place is rich and striking, it is hardly of the finest
workmanship. It served, however, over and above its
effect upon the eye, three useful purposes. First, to
intercept to some extent the bitter draughts ; secondly, to
carry a gallery for the musicians ; and thirdly, to hide from
the banqueters the kitchen hatches which were previously
in full view.
166 THE FABRIC OF THE MANSION
To Norfolk, too, must be assigned the Great Staircase
outside the Great Hall to the east. In one of William
Barker's confessions, Oct. 14, 1571, he speaks of having
brought Ridolfi to the Duke by the " new payer of stayers
that goeth up to the old Wardrobe," which can hardly be
any but the Great Staircase. It was probably inserted,
together with the Long Gallery which led from its landing,
in the first years of Norfolk's tenancy. A water-colour
drawing in the British Museum shows that up to the first
quarter of the nineteenth century the entrance to it from
the Master's Court was in the north wall of the court, and
not in its present position at the corner. It must be
remembered that previously all the staircases of the
mansion had been external,* and this very fine internal
staircase added greatly both to the comfort and dignity
of the mansion.
The terrace and the brick arcade below (known as
" cloisters ") we're made by the Duke of Norfolk to give
access, in dry weather or in wet, to his tennis court. The
west wall has on its external face — visible only from the
narrow court below — the figures 157, the last figure having
disappeared. It can, of course, only have read as 1570
or 1571.
The Great Chamber or Governor's Room was probably
in existence under North but was greatly beautified by
Norfolk, who added the very fine ceiling f and probably
also the magnificent fireplace. The fireplace in the
Master's drawing-room is also probably an insertion by
Norfolk.
It may be taken as practically certain that North took
over the outbuildings of the Monastery round the Laundry
Court (Washhouse Court) and on the site of the present
Preachers' and Pensioners' Courts, with very little change,
* One only of these remain, viz. at the north-west angle of
Master's Court. That staircase led up to the Duke's privie chamber,
where the letter of Mary Stuart was found. One wall only of the
external staircase, which led from the Entrance Court up to the
Long Gallery of Howard House, is still visible.
t The armorial bearings are none of them later than Norfolk's
date.
AN ELIZABETHAN TOWN HOUSE 167
and passed them on to Norfolk much as he had received
them, they being, as we have seen, comparatively new and
quite serviceable for the uses of the Mansion.
Here, then, we have, allowing for some uncertainties of
authorship, a tolerably clear picture of Howard House as
it stood on the day when Norfolk went forth from it on
the " Fote-clothe Nag." It had become in the twenty-
seven years that had passed since North became the
owner of the deserted Monastery one of the most sumptuous
of the town palaces of the age of Elizabeth. To-day it is
the only town palace left to us of its date (there are, of
course, many noble country houses of the date in England)
which retains any considerable features of its origin. The
centuries which have passed have left to it, in spite of the
fact that it has been in daily use since that time, and that
it has been often altered and adapted to modern uses,
much more than might have been expected of its ancient
beauty. If Northumberland and Norfolk, if Burghley
and Walsingham, if Elizabeth and James, if Suffolk and
Ralegh, Drake and Cumberland could come back to the
halls where they were once at home they would still see
a very great deal which they had set eyes on in the greatest
of English centuries.
THOMAS SUTTON
FEW men of equal importance have met with worse
treatment at the hands of their biographers than our
Soldier Founder Thomas Sutton. The proved facts of his
life are so few that they might have met with better
husbandry from those who have handled them. Yet even
these have been for the most part omitted or presented in
form so disguised and grotesque as to make them hard to
recognise. And in their place we have had impossibilities,
possibilities, improbabilities, probabilities, inferences, en-
largements, all given the same value as of facts, so that the
true figure of the man has from the days of his first
biographer till quite recently been quite obscured. It
may safely be said that up to the time of the appearance
of the article in the Dictionary of National Biography no
trustworthy account had been written. Even now few
months pass without notices in newspapers which describe
him as a merchant. This useful soldier of Elizabeth's day
was merchant, in the latter days of his life, only in the
sense in which every one in that day who had any money
to invest became a merchant, if so it can be called, by
taking some shares in the merchant ventures, half patriotic,
half commercial, which went forth beyond the line to the
far Indies, or to the Pacific shores when a Drake or a
Hawkins, a Martin Frobisher or a George Fenner, or a
Lord Thomas Howard sailed with a mixed squadron in
search of national honour and Spanish treasure. Warwick
and Leicester, Ralegh and Essex, Burghley and Elizabeth
were on this showing all equally merchants with Thomas
Sutton, the Queen's Master of Ordnance.
168
SAMUEL HERNE 169
The first biographer of Sutton was Samuel Herne,
fellow of Clare College, Cambridge, who, in 1677, sixty-six
years after the Founder's death, produced his work entitled
Domus Carthusiana. It is a quaint and charming work,
whose fancy is quite untrammelled by fact ; but it leaves
one to deplore that the earliest writer to take in hand this
history, one, moreover, who lived perhaps still within reach
of trustworthy material, should have missed his chance
in fashion so incredible. Still more is it deplorable that
almost every writer since has more or less been content to
repeat his absurdities.
He begins in his preface by very rightly sweeping aside
the casual notices of Baker and Peter Heylyn and Thomas
Fuller with all their mistakes. He quotes the childish
legend that Sutton's fortune was due to his finding one
day, as he mused upon the seashore, a treasure cast up by
a wreck. Having thus cleared his page he gives us such a
chapter of mistakes on his own part that we are compelled
to say that no statement made by him can be accepted
unless verified from another source. For example, he
gives the names of Sutton's father and mother as Edward
and Jane — they were Richard and Elizabeth. He makes
our Founder learn his soldiering in " the Italian wars,"
and says that he was present at the siege of Rome — he does
not say on which side, but the omission is less material
since the celebrated siege and sack of Rome, by the
Constable de Bourbon, took place in 1527, and Sutton's
birth cannot be placed earlier than 1532.
Herne marries him to the Lady Popham, widow of Sir
John Popham. This couple were the parents of Francis
Popham, who married Sutton's step-daughter, Anne
Dudley. Sutton is made Victualler to the Navy, but the
Navy records, full of detail at that time, do not mention
his name. Herne makes him Commissioner of Prizes at
the time of the Armada to Charles Howard of Effingham
(whom Bearcroft, repeating the story, describes as brother
to Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk). Here, again, the
Navy records are silent. So, too, are these unimaginative
documents silent as to the picturesque feature by which
170 THOMAS SUTTON
one of Sutton's venture ships is made to bring in a Spanish
galleon with £20,000. Sutton is described as a City
Merchant, a Freeman, and a Citizen of London. He was
none of these things. He is described as a member of the
Girdlers' Company, but his name is not found in their books.
He is made paymaster to the Northern Army and Commis-
sioner for Sequestration of the property of the Northern
Rebels (1569), but no record is forthcoming to establish
the claim. It would be easy to add largely to the list, but
the instances given are those which have been most often
and most strangely repeated.
Sixty years later, in 1737, Dr. Philip Bearcroft, Preacher
of Charterhouse and afterwards Master, published his
Life of Thomas Sutton, in which he corrected some of the
most palpable of Herne's romances, and also took in hand
other " vulgar errors " which passed current concerning
Sutton. Yet, by using possibilities as facts, he left us a
work which has misled his successors, especially Smythe,
who, in 1808, published an Historical Account of Charter-
house by a Carthusian, This book is again too full of
mistakes for unreserved quotation, but its excellent
appendices, with reprints of original documents, claim for
it the highest place amongst the histories of Charterhouse,
and incidentally among the lives of Sutton published up
to that time.
Thomas Sutton was born at Knaith in Lincolnshire
in 1532, as we learn from the inscription on the Founder's
Tomb at Charterhouse. He belonged to one of the branches
of the old Lincolnshire family of Sutton, whose arms, well
known to-day to all Carthusians, were "Or on a Chevron
between three Annulets Gules, as many Crescents or." *
His father, Richard Sutton, is said to have been steward
of the Courts at Lincoln, and his home was in the parish of
St. Swithun f which lies near the Stone-bow, the fine arch
which spans the High Street of the town. I have failed to
* Kinship has been claimed for the Sutton family with that
of Dudley, whose family name was Sutton. The Duke of Northum-
berland is called in the attainder John Dudley alias Sutton,
t The parish church, destroyed by fire in 16445 is now entirely
modern.
KNAITH 171
find out why Richard Sutton was at Knaith at the time of
his son's birth. It has been suggested that he was there
as steward of " the great house." Such great house may
certainly have existed though no trace of it now remains,
and if so would have probably been that of the Darcys,
who for several centuries had been Lords of Knaith. Or,
again, Richard Sutton may have leased a house there at
the time. He does not, however, seem to have owned any
property at Knaith since none is mentioned in his will.
But no certainty can be arrived at on the point.
The parish of Knaith, which to-day has few more than
a hundred inhabitants, consists of a few scattered houses
and farms lying upon the fifteen hundred acres or so which
Domesday assigns to it, on the east bank of the Trent,
fourteen miles north-west of Lincoln and three miles south
of Gainsborough. In a bend of the river whose meadows
slope pleasantly back to the low heights above it on the
east, lies the modern half-timbered house known as Knaith
Hall, which adjoins the parish church. The tradition at
Knaith makes the Hall the place of Thomas Sutton's birth.
But here, with every wish to localise the spot where our
Founder first saw daylight, we find a difficulty. For
Knaith Hall is quite undoubtedly built upon and out of
the ruins of the Priory of Heynings, whose walls may be
traced both in the house itself and in the foundations
visible in the grounds. Heynings Priory was a house of
Cistercian nuns, founded probably in the reign of Stephen,
as a double house for Canons and Nuns, though the Canons
are never heard of again after the original charter. The
Priory — one of the many similar houses which were haunted
by poverty and inefficiency all along the line of their
existence — was spared at the dissolution of 1536, and three
years later, in 1539 surrendered to the Crown when Joan,
the last Prioress, with eleven Nuns, who had enjoyed an
income of just under fifty pounds, went out into the world
with pensions. It is quite obvious, therefore, that Knaith
Hall, which afterwards rose upon the ruins of Heynings
Priory, could not have been the birthplace of our Founder
in 1532. It is, however, not improbable that there was an
172 THOMAS SUTTON
older Knaith Hall — it seems, as I have said, that the
Darcys would surely have had a house to their property
which has disappeared, and this may have been near to
the site of the Priory. More than this we cannot safely
say.
But the parish church, a very interesting building, was
certainly there in Sutton's youthful days. It is within a
stone's throw of Knaith Hall and was the church of the
Priory. It has been questioned whether there was not an
earlier parish church which was destroyed, the present
church being substituted. I can see no reason to think
this. The church has been much larger than it now is,
the choir, which seems to have been larger than the present
nave, having been destroyed.* It is evident that a church
of such a size, built in the fourteenth century, could not
have been needed for the sole use of a priory which at no
time contained more than a dozen nuns. It may safely
be concluded that Knaith Church was the parish church
to which the nuns had access, being doubtless secluded
from the congregation, as is so often the case. And this
view is, perhaps, strengthened by the presence in the
church of a fine font of fourteenth or early fifteenth
century date — though this, it must be admitted, might
have been transferred hither if another parish church
really existed. This font, however, we may feel sure, was
that at which our Founder was held, whether in this church
or another, in the year 1532.
We have no means of knowing how much of Thomas
Sutton's boyhood was spent in the pleasant fields of
Knaith. He was a child of five when the Pilgrimage of
Grace filled the countryside with armed peasants and
soldiers, and, a year later still, weighted the gibbets with
the corpses of the unhappy rebels. It was the first glimpse
to the child of the profession which he was to follow.
Tradition says that he was sent to Eton at the advice of
Dr. Cox, the Headmaster. The fact that Sutton left a
legacy to the daughters of Dr. Cox is somewhat in favour
* There is evidence that in Tudor days the population of Knaith
was greater than it is to-day.
CAMBRIDGE, LINCOLN'S INN 173
of the view. Thence, it is said, he went to Cambridge,
where St. John's, Magdalen, and Jesus Colleges have at
times laid claim to him. Philip Bearcroft was at some
pains to examine these claims, and he printed the letters
received in evidence from these colleges. Sutton's name is
not found on the books of Magdalen or Jesus College, and
the claim probably arose from the fact that he left legacies
to each. But at St. John's — to which he left no legacy,
however — is found the name, at a suitable time, of one
Thomas Sutton, a " quadrantarius " or Sizar. But this
can hardly be our Founder, his circumstances having
been such as to make it most unlikely that he would have
been entered to a position which, in those days, was one
surrounded by painful and even menial conditions. It
must be remembered that the name of Sutton — owing to
the large number of places called Sutton in England — was
common then and now.
It may, however, be taken as certain that he was at
Lincoln's Inn ; and, after that, he is said to have travelled
for some time abroad. That is very probable, though the
fact that the mendacious but unfaltering Herne gives us
the exact periods spent in various countries — two years in
Holland, two years in Italy, two years in France, two
years in Spain — disturbs, perhaps unreasonably, our
confidence. We find ourselves on safer ground when, in
1558, his father, Richard Sutton, makes a nuncupative will
in which he leaves to his son the lease of the Manor of
Cockerington * in Lincolnshire, together with half the
residue of his other property, the other half going to his
wife, Elizabeth Sutton, the Founder's mother. She was
the daughter of Sir Brian Stapleton (or Stapylton) of the
ancient Yorkshire family which, in an earlier century, had
produced Sir Brian Stapleton, the great soldier of his day.
Bearcroft in his history, quoting from the Herologia
Anglica, tells us that Sutton was private secretary to
Ambrose Dudley (Lord Warwick), to Robert Dudley
* It is not said whether this is North Cockerington or South.
They lie close together near Louth in Lincolnshire. The lease is
said to have been valuable.
N
174 THOMAS SUTTON
(Leicester), and to the Duke of Norfolk. It is most un-
likely that he should have acted in that capacity to all the
three, and so far as concerns Robert Dudley we may, with
some safety, dismiss the suggestion since his life and that
of Sutton give us no points of contact in their early period
at least. But in the case of Warwick and Norfolk it is
quite within the fitness of things that Sutton may have
acted as military secretary to either of these noblemen, as
I shall presently show, in his profession as a soldier at
Berwick and in the North.
In 1558, the first year of Elizabeth's reign, we find that
Captain Sutton — there is no reason to doubt that this was
our Founder — drew pay in the garrison of Berwick-on-
Tweed of four shillings a day, having a company under him
consisting of a petty captain, an ensign bearer, a sergeant,
a drum, forty-six soldiers, and fifty-four harquebusiers.
It was a critical hour for England, and no better time or
place could have been chosen in which to learn the duties
of an officer. It is however evident, from his receiving a
commission as a full captain, that he had already seen
service and had experience either at home or abroad.
England was in fear, and not without reason, of an
attack from France by way of Scotland. The reigns of
Mary and Edward and the latter part of Henry VIII had
left the defences of the country in parlous condition.
In all the dockyards and arsenals of England there were
less than thirty cannon or demi-cannon in store. Cecil, in
feverish haste, set about renewing the decayed ramparts
of Berwick, the key of the approach to England from the
north. He wrote two years later to Elizabeth imploring
her to put aside her will-o'-the-wisp vision, the recovery of
Calais : " neither is Portsmouth, your own haven, fortified,
neither the town of Berwick — most necessary of all others
— finished." Before the end of 1559 it became clear that
it had been no vain fear from which the nation had suffered.
In the last month of that year the defenders of Berwick saw
a squadron of fifteen French ships run by in sight of the
ramparts to discharge, a day or two later at Leith, soldiers
AT BERWICK 175
and guns for the nominal support of the dying Mary of
Guise, Queen Mary's mother, against her rebellious Scots.
Cecil knew well the true purpose, which might indeed have
been accomplished if the second squadron under Elboeuf
had not found its billet where a later Armada found it also,
on the shores and flats of the Netherlands.
Meanwhile, in August, 1559, Captain Sutton being
still of the garrison who were working hard at the defences,
came Sir Ralph Sadler, a seasoned and good soldier, and
Sir James Crofts, an equally bad one. And at length
Norfolk, having been persuaded out of his reluctance,
came up to take the command, and Berwick perhaps
contained at one moment two future owners of Charter-
house. A month or two later Sir Ralph Sadler went
forward to the ill-starred siege of Edinburgh, destined to
end in the treaty of Leith, while Norfolk took part with
the reserves at Newcastle.
Sutton drew pay as a Captain in the Berwick garrison
from Dec. 1558 to Nov. 1559. We cannot suppose that
his service at Berwick ended at such a moment when every
useful soldier was needed and when the French fleet was
actually under weigh. There are two ways in which we
may account for his ceasing to be upon the pay list of the
garrison of Berwick. The first is that he may have been
detailed for service elsewhere, at Newcastle, for example,
or at some station on the line of communications with the
South. The other suggestion is that Norfolk selected
him for his military secretary, in which case he would
cease naturally to be on the garrison pay list. And if
this be so, he would, soon after, have gone south with
Norfolk to Newcastle. Here, of course, we are in the
region of inference and conjecture. But it needs both to
explain how, ten years later, he came, as we shall see, to
receive an appointment which made him for life the
responsible guardian of the defences of Berwick and the
North. Cecil was not the man to have put him there
unless the events of the first two years of Elizabeth's reign
at Berwick and on the Border had brought to light a man
of unusual capacity.
176 THOMAS SUTTON
The treaty of Leith, signed on July 6, 1560, perhaps
set Captain Sutton free from soldiering for a while, since
the post was not a permanent one. The French fleet
sailed away from Leith, the English northern army was
disbanded. We have no knowledge of Sutton's actions
till the years 1566-67, when we find him in the civil capacity
of Estreator of Lincolnshire. It is not impossible that,
in the years between, he was taking a practical part in the
fortification of Berwick, which was presently to become,
in the light of those days, an impregnable fortress.* But
in 1569, as has been already recorded in dealing with the
life of the Duke of Norfolk, when that nobleman was sent
to the Tower the northern Lords Northumberland and
Westmorland raised at an ill-chosen moment their standard
of rebellion. The two Lords were unfit for any enterprise
that needed a bold stroke — it might have been different if
Northumberland's Countess could have taken the com-
mand. Sussex, a dull but honest commander, held York
for the Queen — it might have fallen to a rapid assault
while the Lords hung about Durham, held processions and
cathedral services, and did nothing. Lord Clinton, passing
through Lincolnshire to recruit (where perhaps Captain
Thomas Sutton joined him), was given time to reach
Warwick's little force at Wetherby on Dec. 13, 1569.
This was the force, to whichever division he belonged,
with which Sutton served. It was no campaign to be
greatly proud of. The wretched fragments of what a few
weeks before had been a mighty and alarming host, ran for
their lives from Durham, in forlorn companies of a score
or two together. A letter from Captain Thomas Sutton,
now in the Record Office, dated Dec. 18 and written from
Darlington, describes the poor rebel-hunt to Hexham
across the snow-swept moors. Then came the hanging
and the quartering with Sir Edward Horsey, himself an
arch gallows man, as chief executioner, and the rising of
the North was at an end.
Here, of course, we find Thomas Sutton brought into
* The defences are still to be seen in great completeness.
SUTTON MASTER OF ORDNANCE 177
close and necessary contact with Ambrose Dudley, Earl
of Warwick, and perhaps we may recognise here the
opportunity which the tradition requires for Sutton to
have acted, in the re-settlement which followed the military
advance, or even went before it, as secretary to Warwick.
We have already noticed that there was a supposed
kinship between the families of Sutton and Dudley.
There seems also to have been some service on Sutton's
part, for there is a deed of Nov. 12, 1569, by which Ambrose
Earl of Warwick and his wife, the Lady Anne, granted to
their well-beloved servant, Thomas Sutton, for life an
annuity of £3 Is. 8d. out of the Manor of Walkington in
Yorkshire, and a little later the lease of that manor for
twenty-one years at £26 the year. This grant is very
suggestive. And a few months later, on Feb. 28, 1570,
we find Sutton appointed — it is said on the suggestion of
Warwick — as Master-General and Surveyor of Ordnance to
the Queen in Berwick and the North of England for life,
his salary to be counted from the previous Lady Day.
The office which Sutton was to hold for the next twenty-
five years of his life was the most important of the per-
manent military posts of that day. In the absence of a
standing army the efficiency of the Masters of Ordnance
for the various districts of England was the sole guarantee,
in the intervals of peace, for the maintenance of the defences
of the country. And amongst these no district was of
greater moment to the safety of England than that which
was now entrusted to Sutton.
We have seen how Cecil spoke of it to the Queen as
" the most necessary of all " even with Portsmouth in his
thoughts. The duties of a Master-General and Surveyor
of Ordnance involved the work of a modern Artillery
officer and Royal Engineer in one, and in a district which
included such towns as Alnwick and Newcastle, Hexham,
Durham, and Wearmouth, Sutton must, in the early years
of his office, have had his hands full, and must have spent
a great deal of his time in his district. But after the
completion of the fortifications of these parts, especially
after 1793, when the fall of Edinburgh Castle ended the
178 THOMAS SUTTON
last military venture in the North of Mary Stuart's party,
the result gave more breathing time to the Surveyor, and
after 1580 he found it possible to live, as we shall see, near
London, an occasional, or possibly annual, inspection
proving sufficient if no immediate danger pressed.
It was in 1573, four years after his appointment, that
his work was first put to a successful test. Mary Stuart's
son James having been accepted as King, his mother's
crimson flag now flew over but one remaining spot in
Scotland, the Castle Rock of Edinburgh. Here Maitland
and Grange, Melville and Hume, with a garrison of a
hundred and forty-seven men, with forty-five women and
children, held out for the lost cause of their mistress against
Killigrew and the regent Morton, who could make no
impression on the mighty rock and its stubborn defenders.
Morton, after poisoning the only good well by the
Castle gate, appealed to the English Queen for an army.
Elizabeth, " semper eadem," haggled for a month or two
about the price, and then, the situation becoming acute,
sent troops from Berwick under Sir William Drury, who
arrived on April 17. Meanwhile the heavy guns with which
Berwick had been supplied were brought round by sea to
Leith, where they arrived on April 25. It is obvious that
Thomas Sutton as Master of the Ordnance must have been
in charge of this operation. The guns having been duly
dragged to the scene of action were divided into five
batteries, one at the head of the High Street commanding
the main Castle approach, another to the south near the
Grassmarket, two others to the north and west, and one
in the middle of Prince's Street. Sutton was in command
of one of these — we cannot say which. By the middle of
May most of the batteries were complete, but the great
bombardment began on the twenty-second and lasted till
the twenty-seventh of that month. The like of it had
never been known before in any siege of history — no less
than 3000 balls being discharged against the Castle, and
answered by Mons Meg and her marrows with strangely
little carnage on either side, for the besieging batteries
EDINBURGH, GATESHEAD 179
were firing at an elevation which made serious damage
very difficult, while as for Mons Meg, though her " random,"
in the expressive phrase of the day, was from the Rock to
Leith harbour, yet she found it hard to throw her huge
stone balls (the residue of her stock may still be seen on
the platform from which the quaint old monster to-day
looks out over Edinburgh) down into the English batteries
below. The poisoned well, the famine, the exhaustion
of the heroic little band, with the certainty that at any
moment a breach might be made and the place carried by
assault, brought an end to the endurance of the Castle
defenders, who were allowed to march out, all save the
four leaders, under amnesty. Mons Meg was once more
silent on her platform, the guns of Berwick were returned
to their ramparts, and so far as we know our Founder
never again heard a shot fired in anger.
It was not, however, as Master of Ordnance that Sutton
was to prove his great practical capacity. His position as
Surveyor naturally made him familiar with the whole of
that coal-bearing district. He had, besides his professional
salary, some little fortune from his father. It has been
claimed for Sutton by some writers that he became the
pioneer of mining in the coalfields of Durham. This is
merely one more of the exaggerations which cling about
his name. For coal had been won there in primitive
fashion, no doubt, for many a century, and in the centuries
preceding Sutton's, the industry had flourished. What
Sutton really did was to see the value of that industry
and to invest his savings in the purchase of a lease from
the Bishop of Durham, between 1569 and 1580, of the
Manors of Gateshead and Wickham for seventy years.
Here, again, his position has been misstated. The
Victorian County History speaks of him as the " shrewd
financier " who apppeared on the scene at the moment
when the industry needed him. But at the moment when
Sutton, shrewdly enough, obtained his lease, he was not
to be called as yet a financier, merely a wise investor of
his small capital. It was out of that very investment that
he was to gain the wealth which should justify the name of
180 THOMAS SUTTON
financier. The demand for coal was now great and in-
creasing as the coal-fire became a matter of domestic
comfort and thousands of chimneys were added to houses.
Sutton held the lease of Gateshead and Wickham for
some years and then transferred it, no doubt to his profit,
to the Newcastle merchants, who held it under the name of
" the Great Lease " till their monopoly — most unpopular
in London — expired in the seventeenth century. But
before Sutton's death the output of coal which was shipped
from the Durham coalfields about Gateshead and Wickham
on the Tyne had reached a total of 239,261 tons.* In
1580 Sutton himself was said to have amassed a fortune
of £50,000 by the venture which his shrewd eye had com-
mended to him.
In that same year, having probably passed on his
lease, he came south with his fortune, living, it would
seem, at Hackney — he certainly did so in his later life —
but not in London itself. He never became a freeman
or citizen of London ; and in a list of persons of note " not
citizens of London," we find his name entered for the
ward of Farringdon Within as of Islington (this was after
his marriage) he having a room, doubtless for business
purposes, when he rode into London, near " the nether end "
of St. Dunstan's in Fleet Street. Hackney was in that
day a pleasant village separated from London by several
miles of green field, much in request for the houses of the
great, and sought after by Elizabeth herself in her daily
rides.
The village of Stoke Newington close by was another
pleasant place of similar type, and here in 1582 (Sept. 17)
Sutton, described in the licence as of Littlebury in Essex,
where he had just bought an estate, was married to Eliza-
beth Dudley, widow of Sir John Dudley, f She brought him
again much wealth which, added to his previous fortune,
made him by common report, perhaps incorrect, the richest
commoner in the land. His wife had only a life interest
* In 1905 it was 37,397,196 tons.
t Elizabeth Dudley was daughter of John Gardiner of Grove
House, Chalfont St. Giles, Bucks.
QUEEN ELIZABETH AT BUTTON'S HOME 181
in the house at Stoke Newington, which passed at her
death to her daughter, Anne Dudley, who presently
married Francis Popham, son of Sir John Popham, Lord
Chief Justice, and was none too happy in her match.
Queen Elizabeth visited them at their home and seems to
have taken much notice of the daughter, on one occasion
giving her a jewel to wear in memory of the visit. For
twenty years, till the death of Elizabeth Sutton in 1602,
this house at Stoke Newington was Sutton's London
home. He was, it will be remembered, still Master of the
Ordnance at Berwick, and must have often been away
from home for considerable periods, and his occupations,
during his intervals in London, have been made the subject
of much imaginative writing. He has been described as a
banker, or more flatly as a money-lender. There is no
evidence to justify the use of either name in their ordinary
sense. But he was a rich man from whom many other
men were glad enough to beg or borrow, and existing
documents show that not a few persons from time to time
owed him money. The Queen herself owed him £100, and
noblemen and commoners followed the Royal example
and were not above making use of Sutton's wealth. But
in the understood sense, this is hardly either a banking or
a money-lending business. We may almost take it for
granted, too, that Sutton would often have had shares in
the many ventures, half national and half commercial,
which continually went forth to the Indies, to the Guinea
Coast, and to the Pacific under such men as Ralegh and
Howard, George Fenner and Martin Frobisher. These
expeditions — sailing some with the Queen's orders, some
with her tacit consent, some with her nominal disapproval
— often carried the Queen's own shares, and that of many
of her ministers, her nobles, and her commoners. But it
was, for obvious reasons of national convenience, not the
custom of the day to publish a list of the shareholders. It
is only here and there that we happen to know by accident
that Warwick or Leicester or Ralegh owned a whole ship
or so in a venture. In the list of subscribers to the national
defence at the approach of the Spanish Armada in 1588
182 THOMAS SUTTON
we find the name of Thomas Sutton for the county of
Essex, with £100 — no larger sum appears in any list —
against it.
This was, of course, a patriotic list, but in the list of
private venture vessels which took part against the Spanish
fleet, we find recorded the barque Sutton, hailing from
Weymouth, of 70 tons, 40 men, commanded by Hugh
Preston (elsewhere given as Pearson), which formed a
part of Effingham's division. It is believed, and I share
the belief, that this barque belonged to Thomas Sutton.
It has been urged that Sutton had no connection with
Weymouth. Such a connection was not necessary, since
no more convenient port for a small privateer to hail
from could be desired. And, moreover, Sutton certainly
had west country interests. There is a document in
Charterhouse muniment recording a visit by Thomas
Sutton on horseback when he was between seventy and
eighty, to relations at Bath, and he left some twelve farms
near Swindon to the governors of his hospital, which they
still possess * (1913). But when we come to further
highly picturesque details it is time to stop. Thus we are
told that Sutton himself commanded this barque, though
we know otherwise, and it is also obvious that Sutton's
post at such a moment can only have been at Berwick,
on which a descent by the Spanish fleet was quite possible.
Again, we are told that this same barque, apparently during
the Armada fights, captured and brought in a galleon
worth £20,000. The names of the Spanish prizes are
pretty well known to the Navy Records, and nothing of
the kind is recorded. It is to be said, in favour of the
ownership of the barque by Thomas Sutton, that it was a
common custom for a private venture ship to go afloat
under the name of her owner. Thus in the Armada list
of English volunteers we find the galleon Leicester f
(commanded by George Fenner), so called because she was
owned by Robert Dudley, the Drake a private venture of
the Admiral, the Bark Buggins, and a score of others.
* Since sold.
f Previously called the Ughircd, after her owner, Henry Ughtred.
THE BARQUE SUTTON 183
Beyond this we must not go, and we must be content to take
the question of the barque Sutton as a highly engaging
possibility.
The evidence of his ventures by sea in this sort have,
almost of necessity, disappeared, but the evidence of some
other of his investments remain on the surface of the land.
We find him possessed of land * in Lincolnshire, at Dunsby
and at Buslingthorpe, of land in Essex and Cambridgeshire
at Ashdon Balsham (and later at Castle Camps), at
Hallingbury, Southminster, Stambridge, Cold Norton,
Wigborough in Essex, and as already mentioned, near
Swindon in Wilts. These lands, good purchases in their
day, were for over two centuries a source of good income
to his Hospital, and to-day have sorely lost their value
through causes which neither Sutton nor any living person
in his day could have foreseen.
In 1594 Sutton's health had begun to fail. He gave up
in that year — being then sixty-two years old — his office
as Master of the Ordnance at Berwick, a post which,
with its long journeys on horseback, must have become
a severe ordeal to him. He held at that time the lease
of Broken Wharf, which lay a few hundred yards west
of Greenhithe, on the north shore of the river in Upper
Thames Street just below St. Paul's. The name of
Broken Wharf still survives in an opening with landing
and steps between dismal warehouses. In Sutton's day
there was a dilapidated dwelling adjoining it which, with
the wharf, had belonged to the Bigods, the earlier Norfolk
family. Some writers have made the mistake of saying
that this was Sutton's home in London, but during the
whole of the period when he held the lease of Broken
Wharf he was, as we know, housed at Stoke Newington.
He owned the wharf probably as a mere investment for
the sake of its landing fees, and perhaps also for occasional
use when some venture in which he was interested came
back from the high seas.
* In 1918 the Governors of Charterhouse decided to sell all their
landed estates. The farms at Buslingthorp and the Castle Farm
(Sutton's last country house) at Castle Camps remain.
184 THOMAS SUTTON
The map of about 1593 shows an elevation of the
houses at the wharf, and also tells us that the Dutch
eel boats which now have their permanent moorings off
Billingsgate were, in Button's day, lying off Broken Wharf.
Sutton resigned this lease in 1594, when the ruined dwelling
was turned into an " engine " for the water supply of the
City.
But what shows us most plainly that Sutton was at
this time sitting lightly to life is the fact that in 1594 he
took precautions to ensure, in case of his death, that his
great project for the foundation of a hospital and free
school could not be frustrated. He assigned to the Lord
Chief Justice, Sir John Popham, and to the Master of
the Rolls, as trustees, his estates in Essex at his death,
for the foundation of a hospital (i.e. hostel) for old men
and a free school for boys on his estate (which is still
(1913) Charterhouse property) at Hallingbury Bouchers,*
some few miles west of Bishop Stortford. The deed
was made subject to revoke — which, as we shall see,
actually took place. A little later in the same year, 1594,
namely on Dec. 17, he made his will in which he left the
residue of his estates to his wife, Elizabeth Sutton, with
a legacy of £2000 to the Queen, " in recompence of his
oversights, careless dealing, and forgetfulness in her
service, most humbly beseeching her to stand a good and
gracious lady to his poor wife." This bequest of Sutton's
is not to be taken as an evidence of any real failure in his
duty towards his office as a soldier, nor was his wife likely
to be in any need of help or protection that should prompt
him to try and buy favour of the Queen. It was the
conscientious act of a man who was no courtier at any
time of his life, and who seems to have had a strong sense
of duty. Camden, who does not mention Sutton's name,
bears witness incidentally in his Britannia to the fine
condition of the defences of Berwick, raised in Elizabeth's
reign, and kept at a high standard of efficiency, well
* Sutton's lands at Hallingbury Bouchers remained till 1918
in the hands of the Governors. They were once seriously considered
as the site for the school at its removal from London.
MRS. SUTTON AT BALSHAM 185
supplied with all manner of warlike stores. It is a very
different story from that which William Cecil had had to
tell of it at the end of Mary's reign.
But Sutton was to live seventeen years longer and he
seems to have recovered a full measure of vigour both of
mind and body during the later years of his life. Elizabeth
Sutton after all was to die nine years before her husband,
in 1602. The marriage had been a happy one, if we may
judge by the glimpses which we get of their relationship
from the letters which she wrote to him. She possessed
evidently the best qualities of the lady housewife of that
day, and her interest in all that fell to her care as such is
charmingly shown to us. They seem for some years
before her death to have used Balsham as their country
home, and when he was away his interests were in good
keeping. One such letter,* almost the last she ever wrote,
and evidently treasured by Sutton amongst his papers, is
worth quoting. The address is "To my lovyng housband
Mr Sutton gyve this." It is written on three sides of
octavo wire-woven paper, and there are notes, accounts,
and memoranda in the Founder's hand jotted down here
and there on it
" Good Mr Sutton. I have according to your direction
to Edward by word of mouth taken order and sat your
plough to worke yesterday. God sped yt. I hayd [had]
goodman Hasell's hilpe to buy your too horses of Manard
wych most cost x1. [£10]. Edward tels me it is worth
xls [405.] more than you payd and I have taken Manerd's
man upon lykyng tell your coming home and gyven torn
hart a lesson too follow his worke. As for a shaperd
[shepherd] godman Hasell cannot provyd you of any as y*
and he sayth that you wir better too kype thys wyth on
[one] fault than too take on of the Godard wyth many
fautes. VII ploughs of Hadstock be at ploying Wylloms
Farant Banks Adam, Boncher Cundall and Flake and they
are told that if you cannot agree of a pryes they shall be
payd for the worke but th ar [they are] in good hope that
* Charterhouse Muniment Room. Reproduced in facsimile in
the Greyfriar, 1912.
186 THOMAS SUTTON
you wyll be good to them as I trust in God you wyll. I
did hear that they would be glad to give Vs an akar on
wyth another of yield but ground [sic] and truly Mr
Sutton God will bless you yf you will let the pore tenantry
have yit of a resunaball rent that they may gave yit y our
thrashers had down all your barley and would know your
plesur yf they shall go in hand with your pease wheat
and rye. Also Edward would know your plesur what
shall be down wyth the shepe that be at Pettytes he hath
spoken three tymes to hym too feeche them awaye hee
hayth no fedying for them. Your ewes have been carryd
to the pastur. Soe praying God to bless you both and
send yourself well too mee. From Balsham this VI of May.
Your loving obedient wife,
ELIZABETH SUTTON.
" Wylam and parsevall went thusday to Mr. Maryet
and they payd for malt iis viii<l and for resonabell wheat
vs vi(l rye at iiii and yt ys though[t] that corn will ryes
therefore yf yt plese you yt wer good that your wheat and
rye were kept for your one youse [use] I pray you Syngnyfy
your plesur yf parsevall shall make any provycyon for
malt."
The death of Mrs. Sutton cannot but have brought a
great change into Sutton's life. Her life interest in the
house at Stoke Newington passed to her married daughter,
the Lady Anne Popham, and Sutton seems to have returned
to Hackney, perhaps to the house which he had occupied
before his marriage twenty years back. He owned several
houses there and in one of these he eventually died.* His
life must have now become very solitary. He was an only
son, so far as we know, and was himself also childless, and
we do not hear of any close relations except a cousin,
Richard Sutton, and his nephew, Simon Baxter. And he
had reached the age when most of the friends and com-
panions of a man's youth have, naturally, gone from his
* These houses, called Sutton Row, are still the property of
Charterhouse. They are near St. John's Church, Hackney, and
adjoin St. John's Church Institute, an extremely fine old house
which retains many of its sixteenth century features. The house
in which the Founder died no longer exists.
LADY DE MANNY (MARGARET MARESCHALL).
KONUMENT OF ELIZABETH BUTTON (STOKE NEWINGTON).
OLD AGE 187
side. He is said to have much reduced his household and
scale of living, clinging more closely than ever to the thought
of his future foundation. He suffered not a little from the
importunities of those who knew him for a man of wealth
and childless. The collection of begging letters which were
found amongst his papers — neither more nor less numerous
than is usual in such cases — do not make pleasant reading.
Impecunious members of noble families, ladies, beggars in
the guise of well-wishers to his soul, beggars without
disguise, one and all closed in upon him — as vultures
waiting for the prey. It was well for Sutton's ease of mind
that his fortune was already ear-marked for a great
purpose, and it was well also that his shrewdness and
straightness of vision enabled him to avoid those traps
which are set in vain in the sight of any bird. Sir John
Harrington, the wit and man of letters, whose own baseness
of character made him a bad judge of a man like Sutton,
sought to pander to a trait which he knew to exist in
himself and had so often found in other men. He went
about, without consulting Sutton, to open a bargain by
which the old soldier was to leave all his money to the
Duke of York (Charles I) in return for a peerage. He little
knew his man, and he professed a surprise which was
probably genuine on hearing of a letter from Sutton to the
Lord Chancellor, which is almost fierce in its scorn of the
lettered time-server's sycophancy. He had never at any
time of his life, he says, suffered from any such ambitions,
nor would he hear of that or any such bargain. It would
perhaps have been well if he had always kept the man
and others like him at a full arm's length. But he had on
some occasion lent £3000 to Sir John Skinner, a man
bankrupt alike of money and principle, who owned Castle
Camps, in Cambridgeshire, which he wanted to turn into
ready money.
As the only means of recovering the debt which Skinner
owed him, and perhaps also because it was close to his
lands at Balsham, he paid £10,800 to Sir John Skinner for
this property in 1607. It reads to-day as if he had given
very full value for it. But be this how it may the deal
188 THOMAS SUTTON
was destined to bring him sore trouble. Sir John Harrington
had furthered it by every means in his power, having every-
thing to gain by it, since Skinner owed him also £3000.
Sutton, apparently from the determination not to be left
in the lurch, and having some suspicion perhaps of queer
dealings in the background, postponed the payment of the
purchase money until a drastic letter from the Master of
the Rolls, Lord Ellesmere — which could not have been
pleasant for a man in his position to receive — hurried him
to a completion of the payment to Skinner, then in the
Fleet Prison. But the episode caused Sutton no small
discomfort.
The same Sir John Harrington, little likely to take
offence while there still seemed to be money to be had, in
the September of the next year, 1608, was writing letters
to Sutton to beg for gifts towards " his church," i.e. the
Abbey at Bath. He puts his lodging at Bath at his
disposal and strongly recommends to him the use of the
Bath waters for his ailments. Since, however, we find
Sutton in these years able to undertake the long journey
on horseback to Bath for other purposes, we may conclude
that his ailment, at seventy-seven years old, was mainly
the weariness of old age. Whether he put the Bath
waters on their trial or no we do not know. In 1609 he
made sure of the future of his great plan by obtaining an
Act of Parliament for the establishing of his Foundation at
Hallingbury Bouchers, according to his provisional deed
of gift of 1594. This site was by no means ideal for the
purpose, and it is quite possible that the long interval
which passed between the deed of gift and the Act of
Parliament — fifteen years — was due to the fact that
Sutton was not entirely satisfied with it, and was hoping
to find a better. But now, in 1609, being close upon eighty
years old, he found it unsafe to postpone the settlement of
his Foundation any longer. Had he died in that same
year the Hospital and school would have been founded in
Essex and history would have run on different lines. But
it chanced that Thomas Howard,^Earl of Suffolk, owner
of Charterhouse, was at this time,^as has already been
THE PURCHASE OF CHARTERHOUSE 189
told, engaged in building, or rather remodelling, the
Mansion of Audley End — and with this great strain upon
his purse, and perhaps with no great affection for the
London Mansion, he was ready to part with Howard
House.
Sutton, recognising doubtless that here at last was an
ideal site, agreed on May 9, 1911, to pay Suffolk £13,000
for the site, with Pardon Churchyard and Whitwell Beech
— a large sum in those days, though it would be ridiculously
small in these. It will be remembered that in 1565
Suffolk's father, the Duke of Norfolk, had paid to Lord
North for the same estate £2500. And since the forty-five
years which had passed between the two sales had not
brought with them any abnormal decrease in the purchasing
power of money, such as this would represent, we are able
to see in it an evidence of the great outlay which had been
made upon the Mansion by the Howards.
We have no details of the course of the negotiations.
We do not know whether Sutton approached the Admiral
or the Admiral Sutton. But it is easy for us to realise
that the two men were in close touch enough to make
dealings easy and rapid. They must have been well
acquainted. Without calling in the probable or possible
connection of Sutton with Suffolk's father (Norfolk), we
may feel sure that the two men must have been many
times brought together, not only on questions of national
defence, but also, and more often, where the question of
financing some venture was in hand. And they must have
had a sympathy in common with the main purposes of the
Foundation, namely, the providing of rest and comfort for
the old age of those who had served and saved England by
sea and land. Apart from the fact that Suffolk needed
money in some haste, we may believe that he found honest
pleasure in forwarding a scheme which was to aid men
who had been his comrades. He was still in favour with
James, and the speed with which the letters patent were
obtained was probably due to his influence. They were
granted on June 22, and by them Sutton was permitted to
found the Hospital and Free School in Charterhouse, the
o
190 THOMAS SUTTON
provisional deed of gift by which it was to have been
founded at Hallingbury being of course revoked.
It was characteristic of Sutton, cautious and business-
like to the last, that he did not pay the whole of the
purchase-money till these letters patent had been obtained
— a method which had the double effect of making his
purpose secure and hastening formalities to their com-
pletion. Suffolk had meanwhile, by a letter of May 25,
had to pray for the advance of £1050, giving a promise to
take means for the " despatching of your Charter from the
King." The actual law formalities completing the deed
of gift were at an end by November, and the Hospital of
King James, founded at the sole cost and humble petition
of Thomas Sutton, Esquire, had its legal beginning.
Sutton seems at once to have set about the preparations
for his Hospital. In October he nominated the first
Master, John Hutton, rector of his old parish of Littlebury
in Essex. Percy Burrell, in his funeral sermon preached
on Founder's Day, Dec. 12, 1614, says that he had it from
a good authority still living that Sutton had intended to
be himself the first Master, but that he set aside the thought
in presence of his increasing weakness. On Nov. 2, the
day after the deed of gift had been signed, he made his
will. It is a document of such length that I have thought
it best to use it as an Appendix, merely mentioning some
special points within it. It contains many legacies,
amounting in all to over £12,000. We have memories of
his soldiering days in a legacy to the children of an old
gunner of Berwick, Henry Tully ; and an echo perhaps of
the northern rebellion time in one to a servant of Lord
Warwick, living in Yorkshire. Very interesting, too, is a
bequest of £100 to fishermen of Ostend. It seems from a
note in the earlier will that, about the year 1574, Sutton had
bought at Newcastle two boat-loads of salt fish and
provisions which had been brought in as prizes by " the
Captains of the Prince of Orange." We have to conjecture
that these ply-boats were conveying provisions to the
Spaniards and were seized as prizes. It was the year of
the siege of Leiden. Incidentally the fact is interesting as
THE FOUNDER'S WILL 191
suggesting that Sutton, after the siege of Edinburgh, was
still in the North. It is clear that he had been ill at ease
from the memory of this quite lawful purchase, which never-
theless inflicted loss on poor men quite unknown to him.
We find legacies for the benefit of the poor of Berwick,
Lincoln, Beverley, and of nearly all the places where he had
property — Hackney, Castle Camps, Balsham, Littlebury,
Ashdon, Hadstock, Dunsby (in Lincolnshire), Elcomb
(in Wilts.), and Little Hallingbury. A bell is given to the
steeple of Balsham, but no mention is made in any shape
of Knaith, which seems to confirm the idea that the con-
nection of his family with the place of his birth had been
of a very passing nature.
It was in the spirit of the age to regard the provision of
bridges and highways as an act of piety — and we are not
surprised, therefore, to find numerous bequests for this
purpose, though, not unnaturally, these bequests are
confined to localities with which he had had relations, or
those in which his Hospital was to have interests. We
read of gifts for the repair of the highway from Islington
to Stoke Newington, and at Hackney, Balsham, Horse-
heath, Castle Camps and Southminster. We find legacies
to nephews and nieces — especially to Simon Baxter and
Francis Baxter. A large legacy of £2000 to his step-
daughter, Lady Anne Popham, but so surrounded by
precautions, and so guarded by the condition that the
legacy is to be subject to a receipt being given as a full
discharge, that we are forced to see that Sutton had some
misgivings. These misgivings express themselves more at
large by a clause which made all his legacies void on the
least opposition by the legatee to the conditions of the
will. He left £1000 to the city of London for loans
without interest to young men to aid them in starting on
their business careers. He left legacies to the children of
Dr. Cox, supposed to have been his Headmaster at Eton ;
a gift of £500 to Jesus College, and of the same sum to
Magdalen College, Cambridge. All his servants are
remembered, and many other persons whom we cannot
identify.
192 THOMAS SUTTON
Very notable is a legacy of £400 to Thomas Howard,
Earl of Suffolk, with the further option of purchasing the
Manors of Littlebury and Hadstock for £10,000, the said
sum to be used for his Foundation, to which he bequeathed
(in addition to all the estates) a sum of £5000, and £1000
for immediate expenses of the House.
When I have mentioned the quaint domestic bequest
to Amy Popham " of three feather beds and so many pair
of holland sheets with the bolsters to them, with so many
hangings of tapestry," I shall have given all the samples
that are needed of a will which is singularly typical of the
age in which it was made, and even more characteristic of
the individual who made it. Sutton has had his critics,
both in other matters and in the details of this his will ;
but for myself, as I read through the thoughtful, kindly
paragraphs, I find in it a very human document telling of
the painstaking nature of a man who did his good by
method and with forethought, of one who had in a long
life obtained a very sure and clear-sighted outlook on the
needs and claims of life, and, above all, of one who did not
intend to let any of his great purpose fail by lack of care
on his part. The comment has been made that Sutton
would have done better to have divested himself of some
of his riches at an earlier date in his life, and to have made
them over by a deed of gift. It is, I think, a sound answer
to this, that Sutton may have judged that, by his own
husbandry of his estates, so long as his life lasted, he was
more likely to leave behind him a sum adequate to his
purpose than if he had cut the increment short by a much
earlier deed of gift.
The appointment of a Master is dated Oct. 30, 1611.
Two days later, Nov. 2, he signs the deed of conveyance
of the Hospital to the Governors, and on Nov. 28 he
makes his will. The combination of these three acts
within a month shows that he realised that his time was
short. A fortnight later, namely on Dec. 12, 1611, Thomas
Sutton was dead in his house at Hackney.*
* A local tradition at Hackney makes St. John's Institute the
house in which Sutton died. It adjoins property which belonged
to Sutton. The real house was destroyed.
THE FIRST GOVERNORS 193
He had named as his executors his friend John Law,
" one of the procurators of the Arches," and a cousin,
Richard Sutton, while the Archbishop of Canterbury,
George Abbott, and the Bishop of Ely, Lancelot Andrews,
King's Almoner, were made overseers of his will.
It is important to note that the first Governors who
were to administer the affairs of the Hospital and to draw
up its Constitution had been named in the letters-patent
granted on June 22, 1911, and it is not possible to doubt
that they were there by Sutton's choice and with their
own approval. The original list is as follows : —
The Lord Archbishop of Canterbury (George Abbott).
Thomas Lord Ellesmere, Lord Chancellor.
* Robert, Earl of Salisbury.
John King, Bishop of London.
Lancelot Andrews, Bishop of Ely (the King's Almoner).
Sir Edward Coke, Knt., Lord Chief Justice.
Dr. John Overall, Dean of St. Paul's.
* Sir Thomas Foster, Knt.
Sir Henry Hobart, Bt. and Knt., Lord Chief Justice
of Common Pleas.
George Montaigne, Dean of Westminster.
Henry Thoresby or Thursby, Esq.
Richard Sutton, Esq.
John Lawe, Esq.
Geoffrey Nightingale, Esq.
Thomas Browne, Esq.
Rev. John Hutton, M.A., Master of Charterhouse.
* The Earl of Salisbury (Kobert Cecil) and Sir Thomas Foster
died before the first Governors' Meeting. Their places were taken
by Henry, Earl of Northampton, Lord Privy Seal, and Sir James
Altham, Knt., one of the Barons of the Exchequer.
CHAPTER XIX
THE IMMEDIATE SEQUEL TO THE FOUNDER'S WILL
THERE is no wish more often felt and expressed by men
than that which asks that their laying to their rest shall
be of the simplest, and it is the one wish that is most
universally set aside. Button's words in his will are
" and my body I will to be buried where, and in what
sort, it shall seem meet and convenient to mine executor
or executors, and supervisor or supervisors of this my
last Will and Testament, with the least pomp and charge
that may be." In what sort the executors interpreted
this last wish will presently be seen.
Sutton, as we have said, died at his house in Hackney,
and the bequest in his will of a sum to be spent on the
repairing of the highway receives some light from the
decision of the executors that the roads were so bad in winter
that the body must remain where it was till it could be
transferred. It was therefore embalmed and encased in a
coffin of lead,* and not until May 28 of 1612 was it trans-
ferred to its temporary resting-place in the old church of
the Franciscans (Greyfriars), Christchurch (adjoining the
present General Post Office), until it could be carried to the
vault under the wing which was now to be added to Charter-
house Chapel.
The Governors held their first meeting that day at
* This coffin remains in the vault beneath the Founder's tomb,
having alone been allowed to keep its place in April 30, 1898,
when all the other coffins were removed to Woking. A note in the
handwriting of Archdeacon Hale, which I have seen, states that he
measured the coffin and found it to be 5 feet 8 inches in length .
194
THE FOUNDER'S FUNERAL 195
Hackney before the funeral. Never, perhaps, was private
person carried to his grave with greater pomp or at greater
charges, in spite of his own longing for a simplicity which
belonged so much better to his nature. The Governors
themselves followed the bier, with the Earl of Suffolk,
Francis Popham, and many others in the train, which,
we are told, consisted at least of 6000 of all conditions
of men. The great procession, after its long march from
Hackney, paused for awhile at John Lawe's house in
Paternoster Row, and then, if we are to believe what
we are told, took six hours to achieve the few remaining
paces to Christchurch, where the funeral service was held.
As for the funeral feast, which took place directly after
in Stationers' Hall hard by, it could have no more claim
to immortality than any other consumption of human
food, save for a certain quaintness which, perhaps, makes
it worth recording in an Appendix. What most concerns
us is that the charges of the funeral, its black cloth hangings,
its pompous procession, its Herald's Office fees,* the strewn
rushes for the floor, the colossal eating and drinking
reached the huge amount of over £2000, including, how-
ever, the splendid tomb which Nicholas Stone and Bernard
Jansen were presently to make at a cost of £400. The
tomb, indeed, is the one feature of it all which can be
regarded with satisfaction as a right and worthy memorial
to the Founder.
But no sooner was this great funeral over than one
of its chief mourners produced for us an object-lesson on
the sometimes value of sorrow so expressed. Simon
Baxter, Sutton's nephew, whose name appears in the
will for a legacy of £300, at once took steps, "suborned
by others " as he afterwards declared, to upset the will,
and he commenced legal proceedings. He did not, how-
ever, stop at that. For, believing in the legal force of
possession, he made, with some companions, an attempt
at forcible entrance to Charterhouse. Once more a
valiant Charterhouse porter, as in the days of Mr. Sheriff
* William Camden, Clarenaeux, signs the receipt for the heraldic
painting used for the occasion.
196 SEQUEL TO THE FOUNDER'S WILL
Kimpton, proved equal to his post. Richard Bird, an
old servant of Sutton, who had been made porter, barred
the gatehouse and kept possession for the executors. It
is difficult to see what possible case Simon Baxter could
have had. The will was regular in every respect. Relatives
had not been forgotten, all due claims had been provided
for. There would hardly be found in these days a solicitor
to advise so hopeless an attempt, and that very fact
reminds us that in those days the course of justice was more
subject to other influences than in these. There are
items in Sutton's will which show that he foresaw danger
from opposition to his plan. Some of the legacies are
plainly meant to smooth the way. The Governors them-
selves had, equally, no illusions. Their policy throughout
the critical period that followed Sutton's death was to
appease in various shapes all those who, from the King
downwards, might interpose obstacles.
We shall, however, do well to follow the exact legal
sequence of the events that followed, and I think it im-
portant to append at the end of this ehapter a table which
shall show at a glance the dates of the various transactions
which led up to the final settlement of Sutton's Hospital.
These dates have been strangely misstated in existing
histories of Charterhouse, and inferences have been drawn
which would have been greatly modified if more accuracy
had been observed.
In the first place, however, mention must be made of
a document to which we cannot with certainty assign a
date. We have spoken of Simon Baxter's assertion that,
in his lawsuit against the executors, he had been " suborned
by others." There is no doubt that Sutton's Foundation
was strongly opposed in powerful quarters, and from no
source was the opposition more dangerous than from
Sir Francis Bacon, the Solicitor-General, who presently
was to appear as one of the advocates for Simon Baxter.
In the Charterhouse Muniment Room is preserved the
copy of a letter written by Bacon to James I. It bears
unfortunately no date, and we are left to place it in its
position with reference to other events by conjecture.
SIR FRANCIS BACON 197
The Baxter suit was, according to Sir Edward Coke's
report, in the Michaelmas Term of 10 James I, i.e. 1612.
It is not conceivable that Bacon should have had the
indecency to write the letter to James after the case
had once become sub judice, and it is therefore neces-
sary to place it between Dec. 12, 1611, the date of Sutton's
death, and the autumn of the year 1612. The letter,
which is quoted at full length, has been several times
reprinted * and is, both in style and in manner of argument,
typical of the great philosopher and lawyer.
He fills many pages in characteristic phrases and
argument to disparage, as it seems, this and all kindred
schemes of charity. His letter proceeds with much
sententious wisdom expressed, as he alone could express
it, to his own final conclusion — one which one can hardly
believe to have been reached by one who has been called
" the wisest of mankind." He finally proposes, indeed, to
substitute for Sutton's purpose, which he has to the best
of his great powers discredited, one of three schemes of his
own. The first of these is the foundation of " a Colledge
for Controversies." The second is a " receipt," i.e. place
of reception ; he " likes not the word seminary," for con-
verts from Romanism to the Reformed Religion. The third
scheme was to use the endowment for the appointment
of preachers to peregrinate those corners of England which
were backward in religion. Purblind as he was, where his
vanity was played upon or his supposed sagacity invoked,
James, even in his most fatuous moments, which were
many, could hardly have been tempted to endorse the
colossal folly of at least the first two schemes. We do not
know what effect, if any, the famous letter had upon
the views of the King. We shall presently see that the
Governors, after they had apparently secured legal cer-
tainty, thought it well to make sure of the Royal Mind
by a method not unfamiliar in that day. For the present,
however, we must return to the dry record of the law-
suit.
* See Symthe, History of Charterhouse, and Dr. Haig Brown,
Charterhouse, Past and Present.
198 SEQUEL TO THE FOUNDER'S WILL
Baxter, the plaintiff, in his suit against John Law
and Richard Sutton, the executors of the Founder's Will,
alleged that the defendants had broken into Charterhouse,
his lawful property as Sutton's nearest of kin. Therefore,
ran the order of the Court at this first hearing, " Let a
jury come before the King [King's Bench] on Saturday
eight days [Octave] after Hilary " (i.e. Feb. 1, 1613). It
was " respitted " till " the Monday next after the Morrow
of the Purification of the Blessed Mary next following "
(i.e. Feb. 8, 1613), at which time came Richard Sutton,
John Lawe, and Simon Baxter through his attorney.
The jurors being called, the jurors say on oath that Thomas
Sutton was seised of the property : and that on July 24 of
7 James I (1609) it was enacted by Act of Parliament
that Thomas Sutton might found a Hospital at Halling-
bury. [It will be remembered that on June 22, 1611, letters-
patent from James had authorised the change of site to
Charterhouse.] A day was accordingly given to appear
before the Lord the King until Wednesday next after
fifteen days of Easter. [Easter Day fell on April 4 in 1613.]
The Court, that day, " was not advised." A day was given
until Friday next after the morrow of Holy Trinity to hear
their judgment. [Trinity Sunday fell on May 30, in 1613.]
The case was adjourned out of King's Bench into Exchequer,
and on June 2,* 1613, it was argued at the bar for the
plaintiff by John Walter of the Inner Temple ; Yelverton
of Gray's Inn ; and, lastly, by Bacon, Solicitor-General.
For the defendant by Coventry, Inner Temple ; Hutton,
Serjeant-at-law ; Sir Henry Hobart, Attorney-General.
Case argued in Exchequer Chamber by all the Judges
of England and Barons of the Exchequer except the Chief
Justice of King's Bench, being then sick — to wit, Sir Robert
Houghton, Sir Augustus Nicolls, Sir John Dodderidge,
Sir Humphrey Winch, Sir Edward Bromley, Sir James
Altham, Sir George Snigge, Sir Peter Warburton, the Chief
Baron, and Sir Edward Coke, Chief Justice of Common
Pleas, and it was resolved by them all in their arguments,
* It is interesting to note that Richard Bird, the porter, was
called on this occasion.
THE LAW SUIT 199
except by Baron Snigge and Justice Coke, that the
defendants, Law and Sutton, were not guilty.
It is essential to note that this judgment, which decided
in favour of Sutton's Foundation, was given on June 2,
because some writers have hinted that this decision was
obtained, or at least accelerated, by something like a bribe
held out by the Governors of Charterhouse. The " bribe "
in question — namely, the gift of £10,000 to the Crown for
the rebuilding of Berwick Bridge, presently to be mentioned
— was not offered till June 26, twenty-four days after the
judgment had been delivered. The judges, at least,
must be acquitted of any charges which have been brought
against them through the failure to observe the sequence
of events. It is, indeed, hard to see what other judgment
they could have given. The case was so clear, the steps
taken by the Founder had been so careful and complete,
that it is not possible for us to explain how it came that
Baxter should have entered a suit so hopeless, except
upon the supposition that he trusted to influences, which
in this case entirely failed to set aside the course of
justice.
The Governors had now obtained judgment which
placed the legality of the Foundation beyond further
question, and already, Iby the Letters Patent of June 22, 1611,
the Royal Consent had been obtained. Nothing but the
revocation of these Letters Patent — a most improbable
step on the part of the King, even though that King was
James I — could now prevent the completion of Sutton's
scheme. Whether, indeed, the Governors thought it
wisest to make all safe with the King by a seasonable
offering (as has been generally assumed), or whether their
action (for we may suppose that the two overseers of the
will did not act without consulting the Governors), it is
certain that on June 26, 1613, the Archbishop of Canter-
bury (George Abbott), and Lancelot Andrewes, Bishop of
Ely, the overseers of the will, wrote a letter to King James,
in which, after much preamble, they profess that " having
advisedly considered that there is not any charitable
work better for the Common Wealth than the upholding,
200 SEQUEL TO THE FOUNDER'S WILL
maintaining, and repairing of bridges " (here they do indeed
echo the thought which we find so often inspiring gifts and
bequests throughout the Middle Ages, when the provision
of secure Roadway by land and Bridgeway by water stood
as a high Christian duty), they desire his Majesty's accept-
ance of the sum of £10,000 for the repairing — it was practi-
cally rebuilding — of Barwick Bridge on the River Tweed.
Whether this was really of the nature of a bribe — there
are clearly two views possible — or the use of a sum by the
overseers which they had the right to use for a pious purpose,
the King received the gift with great complaisancy. For
on July 8, 1613, the Governors were let know by a Royal
letter under the Privy Seal that " we are well pleased to
accept thereof accordingly."
But nine days earlier than the writing of this letter,
namely, on June 30, 1613, the Governors held their first
meeting. I find this date given in no less than four previous
histories as July 30, but the minute books of the Governors'
Assemblies leaves no doubt whatever that it was held
on the date which I have given. And the question is
not without its bearing on the subject, for it shows that the
Governors had no doubt whatever of their position, and
it perhaps suggests that the King's acceptance or refusal
of the gift of the overseers was not a matter which so
affected their position that they need wait for a pronounce-
ment. And so five days after the overseers had, whether
by way of bridging over their danger or by way of pious
duty, made their offer to the Crown, they felt free to begin
their practical duties as organisers of Sutton's Hospital.
Bacon's Bear Garden for Controversies and the Clearing-
house for Converts were set aside in favour of a place
of training for the work of life for the young, and a place
of honourable rest after the work of life is over for the old.
Sutton's purpose was founded on the eternal needs and
claims of Humanity. With a restraint which is rare in
those who long cherish a great project, only to see it
pass from their hands before it is accomplished, Sutton did
not tie the hands of the Governors whom he had chosen
as to the details of his hospital. The exact Constitution
THE CONSTITUTION 201
of the Foundation was left for them to shape. They
met for the first time for the purposes of real business —
the meeting at Hackney on the day of the funeral can
hardly be counted — twenty-eight days after the decision
of the Judges, namely, on June 30, 1613. This " Assembly
of Governors " was held in the Great Chamber or Reception
Chamber of Howard House, destined from that day forward
to be called " the Governors' Room." An entry in the
expense book tells us of the sum expended on hangings
for the occasion, and on rushes for strewing the floor
a practice which had almost reached its last days in
England — and, above all, a large salmon, presumably from
the Thames. All the sixteen Governors were present.
It goes without saying that no Governors' Assembly
of equal importance has ever been held, since before
the members had that day passed out of the Porter's
Lodge the shape which the double Foundation was to
take had been fixed. It will be best at this point to quote
verbatim from the minutes as they exist in our Muniment
Room.*
" Item. It is constituted and ordayned by the Consent
of all the sayed Governors that there shall noe Rogues
or Common Beggars be placed in the said Hospitall but suche
poore persons as can bringe goode testimonye and certi-
ficat of their good behavioure and soundnes in Religion
and suche as have been Servaunts of the Kyng's Matie
either decrepit or old Captaynes either at Sea or Land,
Souldiers maymed or ympotent decayed Marchaunts
men fallen into decaye through Shipwrecke, Casualtie,
or Fyer or such evill Accident ; those that have been
Captives under the Turkes * etc."
" Item. No Children to be placed there whose parents
have any Estate of Lands to leave unto them but onlie
the Children of poore Men that want Meanes to bringe
them up."
* It will be remembered that the word " Turk " had at this date
obtained a generic meaning, applying in a general sense to sea-rovers,
pirates, and enemies at large from whom the sailor and the marc-haunt
Venturer alike might meet with disaster to their fortune.
202 SEQUEL TO THE FOUNDER'S WILL
Here we find indicated for us the spirit in which the
first Governors interpreted their trust. The clause points
to the " poor gentleman " class rather than to the
class which we usually call " the poor " or " the indigent
poor."
It behoves us to go into this point at greater length
than should seem necessary, because it has at times been
urged that Charterhouse is one of those trusts which have
been wrested from their true purpose, and turned to the
advantage of a class higher in the social scale. The
Founder's intention, it has been said, was to create a
Foundation for the good of the needy poor. It will there-
fore be of use to place before the reader some important
considerations.
Sutton had nursed his scheme since, at least, 1594,
but probably for a much longer time. In that year, it
will be remembered, he conveyed provisionally his Essex
estates for a Foundation at Hallingbury, and in 1610
obtained letters patent for it, to be changed in 1611 into
letters patent for Charterhouse ; but in none of the three
instances did he insert any detail as to the Constitution
of his Hospital, nor did he exactly in those legal documents
define the class for whom he intended it. To the letters
patent for Charterhouse, however, the names of the first
Governors were attached. It is impossible to suppose
that Sutton had not obtained their individual consent
to act in that capacity before their names were inserted,
nor can we suppose that he failed to possess them of what
his real purpose was. There is evidence that he himself
had studied carefully the character of his future Foundation.
Amongst his papers was found a copy of the regulations
for the Knights of Windsor (now in our Muniment Room),
with marginal notes and comments in Sutton's hand.
If we transfer ourselves to his position we find it hard
to suppose that he would have left his Governors free to
shape his Foundation unless he had felt sure that he
could trust them to shape it according to his wish. In
any other frame of mind he would assuredly have tied them
by closer definition. Perhaps it would have been better,
THE FOUNDER'S INTENTIONS 203
for the silencing of future cavil, if he had done so. That
he did not so may be claimed as the strongest presumption
that he and they were at one before his death as to his
meaning.
Another argument will seem of force to those who
have understood the precarious condition of the scheme
in the middle of that summer in which (June 30, 1613)
the first Assembly was held. It had escaped from the
quicksands of the law, but safe anchorage was not yet
assured. On all sides were enemies who were averse
to seeing so much promising plunder taken safely into
port. Any flaw in the action of the Governors would have
been at once seized upon to make the scheme a wreck.
We have read Bacon's letter, for example, and he was
but one of many. Is it conceivable that with the know-
ledge of this state of things the Governors, before they were
out of danger should have, at their first serious meeting,
run the risk of shipwreck by perverting the purpose of the
Founder ? There were, it must be remembered, scores of
men then alive who knew and had heard from Sutton what
he intended. The outcry would have been loud and
instant from those who were watching for an opportunity.
A curious little piece of incidental but forceful evidence
is found in the statement of Percival Burrell in a sermon
preached on Founder's Day, 1614, already quoted.* In
it he declares that he had it from a friend of Sutton's,
still alive, that the Founder had intended himself to be
the first Master of the Hospital. Now, in the first days
of the Hospital the Master and officers dined with the
Brothers. It may of course be said that it does not follow
that Sutton would have adopted this arrangement. But
it is hard to believe, even without insisting on that detail,
that Sutton, a man who had lived amongst the high ones
of the land, should have proposed to himself to end his
days in the immediate company of men of the lowest social
grade.
The sixteen men chosen by Sutton to be the first
Governors were men of high standing and character. They
* Printed in 1627. A copy is in the British Museum.
204 SEQUEL TO THE FOUNDER'S WILL
included his kinsman, Richard, and his personal friends,
Law and Thoresby, who would hardly have kept peace
if they had seen their old friend's wishes abruptly set
aside. It was an age, moreover, in which the literal
adherence to the known purposes of a trust was held to be
more of a sacred duty than in these later days, when
greater freedom of interpretation is admitted. And we can
hardly be wrong hi thinking that on June 30, 1613, the
Governors were expressing the intentions of the Founder
which had been made known to them when they first
consented to act. The position of those who believe,
as the writer does, that the acts of the first Governors
essentially present the acts of Sutton himself, seems
sufficiently strong without further elaboration.
Little more was done at this first Governors' Assembly
beyond the renewal of a few leases upon Sutton's estates.
It is to be noted, however, that John Hutton was present,
as the minutes record, in his capacity as Master. No
election by the Governors of this first Master ever took
place — though some writers have recorded one — since
it had been made superfluous by the fact that he was
named as such by the letters patent of June 22, 1613.
Hutton was Vicar of Littlebury in Essex, a few miles
from Saffron Walden, where Sutton owned the Manor,*
and where he at times made use of the Manor House
as a residence. Sutton is occasionally described in earlier
documents as " of Littlebury " on this account. Hutton
resigned his post next year, 1614, before the Hospital
had come into being, and accepted the small living of
Dunsby in Lincolnshire, f At their next Assembly on Nov.
13, 1613, the Governors proceeded to practical details.
They elected a Preacher, Humphrey Harkness, a Steward,
John Mocket, and an Auditor, John Wolton. The twenty-
one first Brothers, headed by Captain George Ffenner,
of whom more hereafter, were nominated and elected,
and the first Gownboy or Scholar on the Foundation,
* Left conditionally by his will, with Hadstock, to the Earl of
Suffolk.
t This living is still in the gift of the Governors (1913).
THE ALTERATIONS 205
James Mullens was also elected. Until, however, the
Foundation actually was to be opened (nearly a year later)
the Brothers were to receive at the rate of £5 a year. A
working committee of eight, four to form a quorum, was
appointed, Baron Altham, the Dean of St. Paul's (Overall),
the Dean of Westminster (Montaigne), Henry Thoresby,
Jeffery Nightingale, John Lawe, Richard Sutton, and
the Master. These were entrusted with the task of
sifting and reporting on all applications for the Brother-
hood and for the School, with large general powers also
of provision for all needs, and reconstruction of the houses
and rooms of the mansion to the purposes of the Founda-
tion. Law and Sutton were specially charged with the
provision of all needful materials for this work, and of
all household stuff. It is at this point that we have to
deplore the loss of the first, and by far the most instructive,
of all the committee books.* A note in the handwriting
of Thomas Melmoth, Registrar from 1741 to 1767, tells
us that it had already disappeared in his day. It would
have enabled us to realise the exact changes which were
made and, judging by the minute completeness of the
rest of the series, would have given us absolute certainty
on many points which are now merely conjectural. The
expense books and accounts of the date supply the defect
only in a few instances. We learn, however, that the
Chapel was at once taken in hand. It will be remembered
that in monastic days there had been not a few chapels,
a chapterhouse, sacristy, etc., built against the main church.
These had, since the suppression, been removed, leaving,
it seems, nothing but the main church which had in some
shape existed since 1349, and the tower with the three
storeys of chambers within it, of early sixteenth century
date. This church (now the south wing of our Hospital
Chapel) being only 61 feet 6 inches by 22 feet 9 inches
was far too small for its purpose. A second wing of almost
similar size was built on to the north of it, the north wall
* In 1909 the Master recovered from a second-hand book dealer
a few pages of this lost book. It proved to be the copy of Bacon's
letter. But it seems probable that the rest of the book had been
thrown aside as of no value when those pages were torn from it.
P
206 SEQUEL TO THE FOUNDER'S WILL
of the original church being moved a few feet to the north
and pierced through by three open arches. It is stated —
and it is probably true, though this is, perhaps, one of the
lost facts which the committee book took with it — that this
north wing, with the arches in question, was carried out
under the direction of Nicholas Stone, the great statuary
and architect, to whom the tomb of the Founder — there is
no doubt on this point as the receipt exists — was entrusted.
Many of the minor details of the change are in our account
books and will be dealt with in their proper place.
The Great Hall and the adjacent Scholars' Hall needed
little to adapt them to their use for the Brothers and
Gownboys. In the Great Hall a chimney-piece was added,
or one previously existing was remodelled, and a fire-
place and doorway leading to the " cloisters " placed in
the Smaller Hall. These two halls communicated by
open spaces on either side of the fireplaces (which were
placed back to back). The Master and the officers with
the Brothers, nearly ninety in all, dined in the Great Hall,
while the scholars, to the number of forty, dined in the
Smaller Hall. The Great Hall was now paved with Purbeck
stone.
The living quarters of the Brothers were constructed
within the portion of the buildings which had been the
monastery barns, and had, perhaps, served a similar
purpose in mansion days.* Knowing what we do of the
splendid nature of such buildings in the great monasteries
and remembering that they had probably been rebuilt less
than a hundred years before, we can understand that by
good planning the shells of these buildings could well be
used as the outside boundaries of the new rooms which
were now set up within them. We read of floors being
inserted, and a mason receives payment for thirty-five
chimneys. Unhappily no description of these quarters,
* These quarters, perhaps up to the standard of their early day,
were demolished between 1824 and 1842, and gave place to the
more comfortable quarters designed on the principle of college
staircases with separate rooms for each Brother which the Architect
Blore then erected as the builder of Pensioners' Court and Preachers'
Court,
GOWNBOYS 207
which survived well into the nineteenth century, has been
preserved to us. They were divided, probably, into
separate tenements, with staircases approached from the
Court by narrow doorways. One of these doorways was
preserved when the buildings were removed, and was made
the entry door from Chapel Cloister to Brooke Hall, where
it may still be seen. There seems to be no doubt that the
accommodation given in these comparatively primitive
quarters was in all respects far below that which is now
provided.
The forty Gownboys were housed in the great building
which had been, before its remodelling, the Tennis Court
of Howard House. This stood at the north end of the
covered arcade and of the Terrace Walk over it which
the Duke of Norfolk had constructed, resting it upon the
ruined west front of the line of cells. A Tennis Court
in Elizabeth's day, and especially in the ownership of such
a man as Thomas Howard, was often a sumptuous affair,
and here again the existing building, under fifty years old,
was without much difficulty divided into storeys by the
insertion of floors, and partitioned off into dormitories
in the upper stages, and two large living-rooms, called
Writing School and Hall, on the ground floor. Between
these two rooms a broad stone paved lobby gave space
for a fine oak staircase which led to the upper quarters.
This lobby was entered from " Scholars' Court " by a
fine doorway * whose stones are now imbedded in the
wall of the cloister at Godalming. From this the lobby led
across the ground floor of the building into " Cloisters "
and so gave access to " Upper Green " (once the great
cloister of the monastery), and at the point where it touched
the great cloister wall there remained a considerable
portion of one of the cottage cells (probably from its
position cell E | in the monastery plan). This cell
* The practice of carving names on the stones of this door does
not seem to have begun before the end of the eighteenth century.
The earliest name upon it is of that date.
t This cell, unhappily destroyed after 1871, was in the writer's
day used by the " school groom " for the storage of his utensils,
and wares which he had for sale.
208 SEQUEL TO THE FOUNDER'S WILL
had been embodied in the Duke's Tennis Court probably
as a convenient storage for odds and ends connected with
the Tennis Court.
We have no trustworthy data for describing the accom-
modation of Gownboys in these early days of its existence.
That it was primitive, judged by the standard of to-day at
Public Schools, is sure enough. The present writer spent
nine years of school life in it from 1856 to 1864, and it
had then twice passed through a stage of remodelling
and improvement, once in 1805 under Doctor Raine as
Headmaster, and later again in the Mastership of Arch-
deacon Hale. By 1864 it had reached a point of sub-
stantial comfort which was equal probably to that of
any Public School of its day, and was enough for any
healthy lad, but was still very far behind the equipment
of Public Schools fifty years later. It is reasonable, there-
fore, to suppose that the original accommodation of Gown-
boys in 1614 would have greatly shocked the modern
parent. It had not that effect upon his predecessors in
the production of strong English character.
We may suppose that the Governors provided according
to the standard of their age, but with a leaning, as was
fit for such a Foundation, towards simplicity of life. But
they were fully alive to the value as an influence in the
formation of character of dignified surroundings. And
though, in the dormitories above, Gownboys slept two
in a bed (till the year 1805), yet on the ground floor in
" Writing School " there was provided for them a really
noble room some seventy feet long by thirty feet broad,
whose richly decorated ceiling was supported by eight lofty
oak columns, square in section.* This ceiling divided
into panels was decorated with the arms of the first Gover-
nors of Charterhouse, and was carried out by the King's
plasterer in 1613-14. It was, of its kind and date, amongst
the finest ceilings in England, and it is to be deplored
that steps were not taken to preserve, at least, the arms
* In 1835 when the Headmaster (Dr. Saunders) for the first time
ran a boarding-house, one half of Gownboy Writing School was
taken to form Saunderite Long Room.
GOWNBOY HALL 209
which adorned it. In all other respects the appearance
of the house was severely simple, until on the increase of
the numbers to sixty, Gownboy Hall * was enlarged
under Archdeacon Hale's hand, and became a worthy
companion to Writing School.
I have enlarged at this point on the structure of " Gown-
boys " as it will not have any place in the description
which I propose to insert later of the buildings as they
exist to-day, and because it seems important that some
record should be left by one who knew it.
To return, now, to the work done in 1613-14, in pre-
paration for Sutton's Foundation. We find that the
Gatehouse was rebuilt, " being like to fall " — a fact which
once more strengthens my belief that since Norfolk's day
the mansion had passed through a period of some neglect.
The fishpond was probably filled up, as we hear no more
of it.f The open square of the Great Cloister, which had
become the Garden and the Bowling Green of Howard
House, now became " Upper Green," serving as one half
of the playground of the school. Its northern boundary
was a low mound, known as " Hill," which schoolboy
tradition held as the site of " the Plague pit." Its
origin, however, was far other than this. It merely
represented the site of the seven cottage cells of the north
wing of the Great Cloister, and covered some of the debris
and foundations of those buildings. J On the north of
" Hill " lay a second open space much larger than Upper
Green, and known as Under Green. It had been the
monk's wilderness or wild garden, and the wall, which
in turn bounded it on the north, separated it from the
street, now Clerkenwell Road, which retained the name
of Wilderness Row till within a few years of the present
date (1913). The covered arcade, which had led from
* One of the fireplaces of Gownboy Hall is preserved at Godalming
in " Hodgsonites."
t Its site is now covered by the north wing of Pensioners' Court.
j I have already mentioned elsewhere that as a boy at school
I once saw, in the course of some excavation, the foundations of
one of these cells laid bare. The height of " Hill " was much in-
creased when in Dr. Russell's day Upper Green was levelled to form
a cricket ground, the surplus rubbish being laid on " Hill."
210 SEQUEL TO THE FOUNDER'S WILL
the main mansion to the Tennis Court of Howard House,
now served as a passage from Gownboys to Gownboy
Dining Hall * (not to be confused with Gownboy Hall,
which was inside the house itself) and was always known
by the name of Cloisters.
With regard to the other material changes, it seems
probable that the dwelling-house of Howard House required
little change. The east wing and part of the south wing
became the Master's Lodge, and beyond an account for
two partitions and door frames — which I suspect to have
been the partitions dividing the great drawing-room from
its two neighbours — I am not able to trace any work done
upon it. The kitchen department and the offices passed
naturally and with little change into the uses of the
Hospital, just as they had once passed from the " obedi-
ences " of the monastery to the service of the mansion.
These changes resulted from the Governors' Assembly
of Nov. 13, 1613, and the sub-committee must have
carried them out with great speed and energy, since in
one year from that date they were complete. One readily
perceives the need of such speed. It was employed not
merely that the benefits of Sutton's bequest should reach
those for whom it was meant at the earliest moment,
but doubtless in a much greater degree because the
Governors were anxious to place their trust out of reach
of further attack or change of mind in high quarters.
A Foundation already completely in being, was obviously
safer than one whose details were still in the future.
Another Assembly was held on Dec. 10 of that year,
and the number of the Brothers was completed up to
eighty. We do not know — owing to the loss of the com-
mittee book — at what moment the Founder's Tomb was
commissioned. A year for the completion of such a work
was certainly little enough, and it is possible that it had
been put in hand from the time of the midsummer
Assembly. We find a minute at this Assembly to the effect
that Captain Barnabie Rich, one of the first four Brothers
elected, was to be absolutely dismissed, being a married
* Now the Brothers' Library.
THE BROTHERS' LIBRARY.
REFECTORY STOOLS (C. 1500).
THE FIRST GOWNBOY 211
man ; but a gift of £20 was at the same time made to him
by reason of his good service formerly done. Richard
Clark was also struck off the list with a gift of £10 (so it
seems to read) " on the proviso that he come not to the
Star Chamber to trouble the Lords." The possible
use of the Star Chamber as an appeal under such circum-
stances is instructive.
An interesting minute, too, of this Assembly of Dec. 10,
1613, is that which orders that " the Master, the Preacher,
the Receiver, the Steward, the Surveyor, the Schoolmaster,
the Usher, shall have their dyett together at one table,
the sum of five shillings and eightpence being allowed
weekly for the dyett and fyer of each one." Here we have
the original institution of the Masters' and Officers'
dining-table which at a later period obtained the title
of Brooke Hall from the fact of its being held in the room
which bore that name.*
No further Assembly of Governors was held till July 14,
1614, when thirty-five scholars of the Foundation (Gown-
boys) were elected. The first, James Mullens, had been
elected in the previous November. It was decided also
that "the Tombe which is to be made in remembrance
of Thomas Sutton, the Founder, shall be placed and sett
on the north side (where it remains) of the sayde Chappell
and that the seates of the poore Schollers shall be next
thereto." They remained in that position till the migration
to Godalming. On this day also the Statutes of the Foun-
dation, of which a draft had been prepared by Mr. Serjeant
Moore and Mr. Coventry, were, by means of copies, to be
submitted to the Lord Chancellor, the Lord Chief Justice,
and Baron Altham for their opinions and comments.
In the interval between this assembly and the next
(Dec. 3) several events of great interest occurred. The
first instalment of Brothers were housed in their quarters
after Michaelmas. On Oct. 3, the schoolmaster and usher
seem to have entered upon their duties. At what time the
* When the school was removed to Godalming the Masters'
common room there retained the name, for whose origin see a later
chapter.
212 SEQUEL TO THE FOUNDER'S WILL
first Gownboys slept in their future home is not recorded,
but it is perhaps safe to assume that by Founder's Day
of that year, Dec. 12, 1614, the place had made its true
beginning. Before we come to that date, however,
we must note that at an Assembly of Dec. 3 the resigna-
tion of the first Master, John Hutton, who accepted the
living of Dunsby * in Lincolnshire, was announced, and
Andrew Perne was appointed in his place. The death of
one of Button's two executors, John Lawe, was also
announced, and his place was filled by Dr. William Birde,
of Littlebury, Essex, probably a friend of the Founder.
On Dec. 12, 1614, the body of the Founder was brought
by torchlight from its temporary resting-place in the
church of the Greyfriars (Christchurch, Newgate) to its
home in the vault beneath the great tomb (not then
completed), borne thither on the shoulders of the Brothers
of the Hospital. f The sermon, which was afterwards
printed, was preached by Percy Burrell, who afterwards
became Preacher of the Hospital. It was in this sermon
that Burrell stated, amongst other facts connected with
Sutton's life, that he had it on the authority of one who
was still living, that the Founder had intended himself
to be the first Master of the Hospital.
1594. Sutton's estates at Hallingbury and else-
where in Essex conveyed to Sir F.
Popham and the Master of the Rolls,
with power to revoke.
1610. Act of Parliament.
1610. Letters patent from James I, for a Founda-
tion of eighty old men and forty boys
at Hallingbury Bouchers in Essex.
1611, May 11. Charterhouse sold by Thomas Howard,
* Still in the gift of the Governors.
t There is an early minute of the Governors which gives Captain
Robert Barrett leave of absence for one year to undertake something
in the King's Service — a fact which strengthens the probability
that he was the Robert Barrett who commanded the bark Toby in
the Armada fleet. It was not uncommon to give Brothers leave of
absence in the early days, even to go and serve with the Swedish
King.
NECESSARY DATES
213
1611, June 22.
1611, Nov. 1.
1611, Nov. 2.
1611, Dec. 12.
1612, May 28.
1613, Feb. 1.
1613, Feb. 8.
1613, June 23.
1613, June 26.
1613, June 30.
1613, July 1.
1613, July 8.
1613, Nov. 13.
1613, Dec. 10.
1614, July 19.
1614, after Sept
1614, Oct. 3.
1614.
Dec. 3, 1614.
Earl of Suffolk, to Thomas Sutton for
£13,000.
Letters Patent from James I authorising
the transfer of the Foundation from
Hallingbury to Charterhouse.
Sutton's deed of gift.
Sutton's will.
Sutton's death at Hackney.
Sutton's funeral in Christchurch, Newgate.
First Governors' meeting.
The case of Simon Baxter v. Governors
of Charterhouse first heard.
Postponed hearing of the case.
Baxter v. the Governors of Charterhouse
heard before the Exchequer Judges.
Decision in favour of the will.
The letter of Archbishop Abbott and
Dean Overall, surveyors of the will to
James I, offering £10,000 for repair of
Berwick Bridge.
Second Governors' meeting (held at
Charterhouse).
Decision in favour of the will confirmed
by Lord Chancellor.
The King's reply, accepting the £10,000.
Third Governors' meeting. Appointment
of officers. First Brothers.
Fourth Governors' meeting. List of
eighty Brothers completed.
Fifth Governors' meeting. Thirty-five
scholars elected.
29. First Brothers housed in Charterhouse.
First scholars, Gownboys, housed in
Charterhouse (?).
Sutton's body buried under the Founder's
Tomb.
Governors' meeting. Number of scholars
made up to forty. Nicholas Gray
confirmed as schoolmaster.
CHAPTER XX
THE FOUNDER'S TOMB
IT has seemed best to devote a special chapter to a work
which, apart from its great interest in its connection with
Charterhouse, also deserves more exact record as one of
the masterpieces of its own period, and especially of its
chief sculptor, Nicholas Stone. The receipt which is pre-
served at Charterhouse shows the signatures of Nicholas
Jonson, John Kinesman, and Nicholas Stone, and bears
date of Nov., 1615. But an entry in Stone's notebook,
now in the Sloane Museum, shows that payment had been
made in May of that year. It runs as follows : —
" In May 1615 Mr Janson in Southwark and I did
set up a tombe for Mr Sottone at Charter Hous for the
wich we had 400£ well paid, but the letell monement of
Mr Lawes was included the wich I mad and all the carved
work of Mr Sutton's tombe."
Quite lately there has been found in our Muniment
Room the first design byNiclolas Stone for the figure of
the Founder in full armour. It is evident that Stone
abandoned it in favour of the more picturesque civilian's
costume as we now see it.
We are not able to judge from the receipt, however,
whether the tomb was nearly completed by the day of
the Founder's burial or not till some months later.
The contract for the tomb would appear to have been
put into the hands of the well-known masons' firm of the
Jansens (Jonson or Johnson in English). The head of
214
FOUNDER'S TOMB: NICHOLAS STONE. 1615.
THE JANSENS OF SOUTHWARK 215
this firm was Nicholas Jansen, a native of Amsterdam,
who, some twenty-seven years before this date, had settled
in Southwark,* and presently became a well-known
and prosperous man in his profession. He married an
English wife and was the father of five sons. One of these
sons, there is little reason to doubt, was that Gerard or
Gheraert Jansen who made the bust of Shakespeare at
Stratford-on-Avon. There is still less reason to doubt
that another of the sons was the Bernard Jansen who was
several times associated with Nicholas Stone in the pro-
duction of sculptured tombs, and probably in the case
of the Founder's Tomb. Bernard Jansen had a good
reputation in his day, and he has even been described
as the architect of Audley Inn (End) for Thomas Howard,
Earl of Suffolk. But it is probable that he merely acted
as a co-operator under Thorpe the architect in actually
working the architectural details. Of John Kinesman
I can give no account. Nicholas Stone does not mention
him as having any share in the work of the tomb. I take
him to have been one of the partners of the firm of the
Jansens.
It is, however, quite safe to assume that the design
of the Tomb and the figures throughout are due to Stone,
who was called in by the Jansens as the most promising
sculptor of his day. Nicholas Stone was a native of Wood-
bury near Exeter, thought to have been born about 1586.
He had been apprenticed to Isaac James, and presently
had gone over to Holland, perhaps in the company of one of
the De Keysers, who had large shares in Portland quarries.
He worked in the studio of Pieter de Keyser, who was the
son of the more celebrated architect and sculptor, Hendrik
de Keyser. Indeed, it can be shown that, while Stone
was working with the De Keysers, the tomb of William of
Orange at Delft was under their hands, and Stone not
improbably had a share in it. That he was held in great
esteem by them is shown by the fact that he was allowed
* The yard and workshop of the Jansens seems to have been
near the Globe Theatre to the west of St Mary's Overy, now South-
wark Cathedral.
216 THE FOUNDER'S TOMB
to design the portico of the Westerkerk at Amsterdam *
which Hendrik built, and he presently married a daughter
of the family. At the time of the Founder's death he was
in Holland, but had returned to England before 1614.
It is not unlikely that he was summoned home by the
Jansens when, in 1613, they received the commission for
the Founder's Tomb.
Samuel Redgrave, in his Dictionary of English Artists,
states that Stone built the wing which was now added
to the old monastic church. There is little doubt that
the tradition which he relies on is correct, though I am
not able to find any original authority for it. Our expense
books give only the names of the workmen who carried
out the work, and no master mason (architect) is mentioned.
That there must have been one is obvious, and if we had
the lost committee book we should probably find the order
both for the Tomb and the new wing and aisle under one
head.
It is somewhat notable that visitors to the Chapel
have often been struck, in looking at the three open
arches which divide the new wing from the old, with the
resemblance to the style of Inigo Jones in the strap work
and ornament, as well as in the general feeling of the whole.
But it seems that Inigo Jones was away in Italy at the
time when the changes in the Chapel were put in hand.
And the association between Inigo Jones and Nicholas
Stone, which afterwards united them in so much work in
London, had hardly yet begun — yet it may have already
begun. At all events, either Stone had already come under
the influence of Inigo Jones, or he brought with him from
Holland details which Inigo Jones had also assimilated
from the same source.
Smythe, in his History of Charterhouse, commenting
on the choice of a place for the tomb by the Governors
(doubtless by advice of Stone), says that a worse position
could not have been found as, owing to the darkness, it
* I am unable to find at the present day any trace of Stone's
work in the Westerkerk. The church dates from 1610 and the
following years, and corresponds to Stone's sojourn in Holland.
THE FOUNDER'S TOMB 217
could not be seen. And remembering that the window
at the east end which now lights it from above did not
exist till after 1824, one is tempted to agree with Smythe.
But one has to ask oneself what other position could have
been found. There is absolutely no wall space for it in
the older part of the Monks' Church, and one has mentally
to reconstruct the whole Chapel as it stood, after Stone's
addition of the second wing, to realise the fact that, beyond
the site which was actually chosen, there was only one
other which was possible. This would have been exactly
in the centre of the north wall (the outer wall in that day)
between the two windows (now set back into the present
north wall of the third bay), and exactly opposite to the
middle arch of the arcade. This would have been a far
finer position, and would have given to the Tomb a most
impressive effect, dominating the whole Chapel. But
perhaps questions of expediency in seating the congre-
gation affected the choice. And it must be remembered
that the Tomb would still have been ill seen in consequence
of the blinding effect of the windows on either side. There
was but one remedy — namely, that which was applied
in 1824 — of lighting the Tomb by a window at the east
end. It is very hard to understand how this method
could have escaped Stone himself or the Governors of the
day. The Tomb and the seats of Gownboys must have
been, at all times, in semi-darkness. The light upon the
Tomb from the east window above it is now excellent,
and enables us to realise the richness and beauty of a work
which has no superior in its own immediate period and
country.
It is, of course, no part of our task to criticise the style
of Art to which this Tomb belongs from the purist point
of view — to compare that style, for example, with the lovely
fragments of Gothic sculpture which Time has left us,
or with the masterpieces of Early Italian Renaissance.
All that we need say is, that there are few tombs of its
date in England which, either in the general effect or in
the individual details, are so impressive and so satisfactory.
We might, indeed, most of us prefer that the poor emblems
218 THE FOUNDER'S TOMB
of corruption — the death's head and the scythe, in which
that age took such delight — had been left out, but here our
objections end. One is at once struck by the sense of pro-
portion which, apart from its fine colour and quaint detail,
gives such dignity and stateliness to the work. It is
essentially an architect's design at a time when fine pro-
portion was still the first aim of architecture. And its
colour reaches richness and sombre harmony by the
employment of the natural colour of marbles, though
" pictures," as the accounts call them, i.e. painted marbles
or stone, are not absent. Through successive tiers of
statues and reliefs and heraldries the eye is brought down
till it rests upon the sleeping figure of the Founder.
The account presented by the firm of Jansen to our
Governors enables us to identify all the figures and reliefs
with three exceptions, presently to be noted. On the
highest point we find the virtue of Charity personified
under the well-known symbol of a woman carrying a child,
and the companion virtues of Hope and Faith (holding
a book) are seen at a lower stage. Two small " putti,"
nude children, carrying the one a spade, the other an
inverted torch, symbolise we learn, labour, and rest. But
two females figures nearest to the wall are undescribed.
One of them (left) carries a cornucopia, the other (right) an
object which appears to be a nest of young birds. If this
be so I should interpret them as plenty and want or riches
and poverty, the birds having an allusion to the " two
young pigeons " accepted as the offering of the poor.
Strangely enough the very important feature of the bas
relief in the upper portion of the Tomb is not accounted
for. This relief, which is an admirable piece of work,
shows us a preacher in a pulpit with two rows of figures
in black gowns and white collars of the period, whose strange
attitudes are evidently intended to express deep emotion.
Behind them are standing figures in civil costume, intended
perhaps to suggest the Governors, officers, and persons
interested in the Hospital. It is to be noted that there
is no sign of any young persons or boys of schoolboy age
— a fact which suggests again the belief that the Brothers
THOMAS SUTTON— JOHN LAWE 219
were, in a Public interpretation, the main feature of Sutton's
trust.* There is, by the way, a curious tradition at
Charterhouse that this relief represents Sutton himself
preaching to his first Brothers. The tradition shows a
fine scorn of dates and facts. As a soldier, Sutton had no
place in a pulpit, and had especially provided, it would
seem, for a Preacher. But Sutton was dead nearly two
years before any congregation of Brothers met in Charter-
house. The relief, we may feel sure, simply presents,
in sculptor's shorthand, the idea of the religious nature
of Sutton's Foundation under the general picture of a
sermon to the Brothers.
In the lowest compartment we have a tablet of black
marble with the epitaph, which reads as follows : —
Here lieth buried the Body of Thomas Sutton, Esquire,
at whose only costs and charges this Hospital was founded,
and endowed with large possessions for the relief of poor
men and children : he was a gentleman born at Knayth
in the County of Lincoln of worthy and honest parentage :
he lived to the age of seventy-nine years and deceased the
12th of December 1611.
This tablet is held at the corners to left and right by
two " supporters " of two-thirds life size, in half armour.
They are called in the account merely the " two Captaynes "
— but once more we find some writers assuring us they
are Sutton's two executors. John Lawe (who was a civilian
and a lawyer) and Richard Sutton. The view is, of course,
quite without value, and we may again feel sure that their
presence there is merely symbolic of Sutton's once pro-
fession as a soldier, an indication needed to complete the
sculptor's meanings, since the sleeping figure beneath is
given to us in quiet civilian robes, f Thus we are shown
the two sides of the Founder's life.
Concerning that figure — very simple and very expressive
and wholly worthy both of the great Founder and the
* It will be noticed that Bacon, in his letter of protest to James,
had said but little of the school half of the Foundation,
t See previous page on the earlier design in armour.
220 THE FOUNDER'S TOMB
great sculptor — we may at once say that as a portrait or
likeness of Thomas Sutton we must not demand too much
of it. It is, like so many monumental effigies of its time,
the presentment of a general ideal which we find running
throughout them, rather than an attempt at individual
portraiture. At the time of Button's death Stone was
probably not in England, nor is it likely that he had ever
set eyes on the living face of the Founder. We do not,
moreover, know of any portrait of Sutton made in his
lifetime save one * which was little likely to be known of
or used at that time. Stone was probably content to make
a general statement of a dignified old man in the civil
dress of his day, nor did the fashion of the day in funeral
effigy demand anything more exact.
At this point it may be convenient to step aside to
speak on this question of the portraits of our Founder.
The best known of these is the full length which hangs
on the east wall of the Great Hall. This picture was
painted by order of the Governors in the year 1657. The
minute runs as follows : —
" October 9, 1657. We do hereby order that the
Founder's Picture be drawn at large and set up in the great
chamber where the Governors use to sit and that the Arms
as they are now in the great seal of England together
with the respective Arms of the Governors in a circle
encompassing the same be drawn also at large and set up
in the Great Hall over the Master's Table." [The last
portion of this minute does not seem to have been acted
upon.]
Sutton had been dead fifty-five years. For the last
ten years of his life he had lived in great retirement and
had quite ceased to be seen and known in places of public
resort. The artist to whom the commission was given
could never have seen him, could hardly even have known
any one who could describe the Founder as he looked in
life, even if such description ever were known to prove
of much use to a portrait painter. The artist must
have fallen back upon the effigy on the Tomb. And,
* Now at Goclalming.
PORTRAITS OF THE FOUNDER 221
indeed, when we examine the portrait in question, we find
no reason to dissent from this view. There is an immo-
bility and unreality in the face which is quite explained
by the circumstances of its production. There is a fine
full-length mezzotint of it by John Faber, the younger,
made in 1754. The plate seems to have yielded few really
fine impressions, and these are now very rarely seen.
It is in its worn and ordinary state common enough, but
has been seriously retouched. A half-length mezzotint
by the younger Faber also exists. I have never seen a
really fine impression of it. The full-length portrait which
hangs on the landing in the Master's Lodge was made in
the eighteenth century, with slight alterations, from the
portrait of 1657 in the Great Hall, and, once more, is of
no evidence. There is quite a population of engraved
portraits of the Founder, most of them designed for book
illustrations, and all of them derived, in some degree at
least, from the Great Hall or Master's Lodge versions.
I have never seen one of these which has any claim to
respect, either as a work of art or as a portrait.
In the Town Hall next the Stonebow Arch at Lincoln,
hangs a portrait which bears the name of Thomas Sutton.
It has the Charterhouse Arms in the corner — not, of course,
an evidence, since that kind of addition merely shows
that the person who placed them there was satisfied to
accept the identity. The portrait — which appears to have
been given at an earlier date than the painting of our
Great Hall picture — has no resemblance to any of the
portraits of Sutton, and is without value. From time to
time ostensible portraits of Sutton come into the market,
but they have proved to be copies of less or more merit
from the Great Hall portrait, with one exception.
That exception must now be mentioned. About the
year 1884-85 Messrs. Pearson, the art dealers of Coventrv
Street, purchased the panelling and contents of a house
in Stoke Newington which was to be demolished. The
panelling had been painted or whitewashed. But on the
back of one of the panels was found pasted a memorandum,
somewhat mutilated, which recorded the fact that the
Q
222 THE FOUNDER'S TOMB
portrait on the face of the panel was that of Thomas
Sutton, Founder of Charterhouse. It ran thus : —
" Thomas Sutton born in Lincolnshire 1532 died 1611.
He purchased] the Charterhouse for 13000£ an[d] founded
a hospital for the relief of indigent men and children.
Painted by Rubens. J. H. Bonell [or Bovell] Jan. 12
[the year is worn away]."
Though the record is of a later date, the portrait is
evidently of about the time required, namely, the last
years of Elizabeth or early years of James. And remem-
bering the connection of Sutton with Stoke Newington,
we find it no small increase of the probability that the
memorandum on the back, clearly placed there lest the
identity of the portrait should by and by be forgotten,
is trustworthy (except, of course, as to the authorship).
It is certainly a portrait from life, and not a plagiarism
from a statue or from a tradition. The writer of this
book, after going very carefully at the time into the
circumstances, came to the conclusion that we have
here the one authentic portrait of our Founder which
exists. If it be not so, there is no other. The portrait
now hangs in the Hall of the School at Godalming.
If one is asked how it came that Sutton had escaped
having his portrait painted in an important fashion by
any of the capable men who have handed down to us
the appearance of such men of the day as Gresham, Dr.
Caius, Nicholas Bacon, and many and many another,
one can only answer that it is consistent with the unostenta-
tious, simple character of the man.
The descriptions of his personal appearance in Herne
and other writers are, one is forced to suppose, mainly
imaginary.
CHAPTER XXI
THE EARLY DAYS OF BUTTON'S HOSPITAL
THE Brothers entered upon their heritage after Michaelmas,
1614, some few months before the Foundation Scholars
(Gownboys) made their appearance. It is to be noted
as indicating to some extent the type of man for whom
the Brotherhood was designed, that in the first list of
Brothers a large proportion are " Captains." Of these
not a few bear naval names, and it is reasonable to suppose
that some of these, as well as those who were captains by
land, had come in contact with Sutton either in his capacity
as Master of Ordnance or as one who had interests in
Merchant Venture. The absence of all description in our
Hospital records makes it hard in most cases to assert an
identity, but when we come to such names as Captain
George Fenner, Robert Barrett, Winter, Lawson, Hakluyt,
we feel that we are not dealing with mere coincidence.
Many others there are whose surnames agree with those
which we find in the Navy records. It is very likely that
many of the twenty-five brothers who were nominated at
the first assembly were Sutton's own choice. It may be,
too, that Suffolk had some voice in suggesting men who
had served England well in the hours of her need and were
now left high and dry to beg then* bread in their old age.
The first name on the list of Brothers is that of
Captain George Ffenner (Fenner or Fennar). There is
little reason to doubt that this is that great seaman whose
best action made a landmark in our naval history. He
was one of a great family of sailors, either natives of
Chichester or at least Sussex men, of whom no less than
223
224 EARLY DAYS OF SUTTON'S HOSPITAL
four held commands in the fleet against the Spanish
Armada ; but of these, though he did not ever obtain the
rank of Admiral like his cousin Thomas, none stands so
high as a seaman as George Fennar. He was of the type
of John Hawkins rather than Francis Drake — half buc-
caneer, half naval officer, but wholly patriot. We hear of
him first, dimly, in his youngest days as having made an
expedition to the Gold Coast about 1558. Then, in 1566,
when Hawkins had fitted out an expedition for Guinea
and when, on the protest of De Silva, Hawkins was stopped,
we find Fennar in command, doubtless of the same expe-
dition, but with a solemn injunction from the Crown that
he should not visit the Indies, nor injure any of the Queen's
subjects, or do anything against the King of Spain. With
these orders Fennar started southwards with three ships,
to find himself treated by the Portuguese as a pirate (not
without show of reason) in the southern seas. He barely
escaped them at Santiago off the Cape de Verde Isles by
cutting his cables and making for the Azores. Here,
separated from his consorts, and alone in his little ship the
Castle of Comfort) he was innocently — so he said — following
up a Portuguese ship to borrow a cable, when he was set
upon by a Portuguese galleon of 400 tons and two caravels.
He held his own somehow all that day, but next morning
four more caravels had come up. By superior gunnery
and seamanship he beat them off all that day, and they
hauled off at night. When the third morning broke the
Castle of Comfort had escaped.
Naval historians rank this as the first great example
of an English gunnery action, soon to be followed by so
many others, but by none more masterly than that of George
Fennar of the Azores. Of the results of the expedition —
to the shareholders — we have no record. For the next
twelve years Fennar was " trading " with Holland. His
views of trading were unhampered by the shackles of
international law. We hear of his bringing in two French
ships into Portsmouth — much aggrieved, moreover, when
his Government made him give them up — and at a later
date again he is made to restore French prizes taken off
GEORGE FENNAR 225
La Rochelle. But when the Spaniards and the Flushingers,
whose views of commerce were much as his, from time to
time pillaged his ships he was full of protests which availed
him not. However, when the Great Armada was expected
and England needed her best seamen, Robert Dudley,
Earl of Leicester, placed him in command of the galleon
Leicester (called after him), one of the two largest private
ships in the fleet. In the months before the great arrival
he was specially told off with his cousin Thomas (in the
Nonpareil] to patrol the coast of France for vessels running
between Spain and Holland. But when the Armada came
he was back with his division (Francis Drake's) and played
a gallant part in the three great naval actions of Portland
Bill, the Isle of Wight, and Gravelines which saved England
and which most Englishmen hardly know by name. Then,
the danger past, Fennar is found back at his old enterprises,
sometimes on private venture service, sometimes employed
by Cecil. He surveys the port of Boulogne for the latter,
and is with Essex in the Island Expedition, and then, in
1597, when Essex, Suffolk, and Ralegh were sent to blockade
Ferrol and destroy the Spaniards' ships, the Queen, through
Cecil, inserted a singular clause into the orders : " As we
have had good experience of the faith and judgment of
our servant George Fenner, we require you for any con-
sultation concerning any matter to be attempted at sea
to call him to your council and hear his mind." It is
clear enough that if George Fennar had been a man of
title he would have been Lord High Admiral. As it was a
few years' lapse was to see him penniless. Two years
later, when England was full of the coming of the fresh
Armada, it was once more to her George Fennar that the
old Queen and Cecil looked. He was sent in the Dread-
nought to cruise off Brest and watch the mouth of the
Channel. But he had to put back to Plymouth for
provisions and stores. Spinola, a seaman worthy to be
named with Blake and Nelson, seized the chance and ran
out with his six galleys. The news, slow of travel, reached
London too late. Cecil despatched a messenger in hot
haste to Plymouth, to tell Fennar that Spinola was at
226 EARLY DAYS OF BUTTON'S HOSPITAL
La Hogue with his galleys. " Tarry not, good George, but
do the best you can, for we would be very glad these
might be catched or canvassed [foiled]. . . . You are a
wise man and have experience to use stratagems." At
noon that day Fennar weighed anchor and was gone, his
Dutch allies lumbering after him three hours later. He
reached La Hogue to learn that Spinola had gone thence
before Fennar left Plymouth. The brilliant sailor of
Spain ran past Howard and Leveson posted at intervals
to intercept " the baggages," as Cecil called them, and was
in the Scheldt, while Fennar was crowding all sail off
Le Havre. It was a failure none of Fennar's making, but
the mockery which long clung to the coming of the Invisible
Armada was a sad end to a great career. Old and dis-
appointed he is heard of no more at sea. The Dictionary
of National Biography suggests that he may have died
about the time — but there is little doubt that he lived to
find his haven at last in Charterhouse in 1617 or 1618. It
is a striking fact that to him alone * was accorded the
honour of burial in the Chapel itself. He was borne
thither on the shoulders of the Brothers, some of them
his old comrades in arms.
I have dwelt at some length on George Fennar as
typical of the kind of man that Sutton and his first
Governors seemed to have in view for the Foundation.
But there were others who deserve some brief mention.
Another Armada name is that of Captain Robert Barrett.
He is probably or possibly the man who commanded the
Toby of 250 tons, 100 sailors, fitted out by the City of
London against the Armada. And that same Captain
Robert Barrett of the Toby was perhaps the " Mr. Barrett " f
who was master, under John Hawkins, of the Jesus at
San Juan de Ulloa, destroyed in the treacherous attack by
Don Francisco de Luxan. Of Captain Lawson we only
know that he found it hard to be second in command on a
* This special honour can hardly have been due to the fact
alone that his name came first on the list of men appointed to Sutton's
Hospital, since that might have been mere accident, implying
nothing. The exceptional honour was doubtless due to the excep-
tional distinction of the man.
f See Kingsley's Westward Ho !
THE FIRST BROTHERS 227
new deck, for on July 6, 1615, he is reported to the
Governors for behaving " very contemptuously against the
Master," and the Governors thought " the faulte ... so
verry fowle " that they " respitted " the matter till a
later assembly. Another of these early Captaynes — John
Gascoyne — after various efforts to rescue him from debt,
is reported as in prison, whence he makes application to
the Assembly for his " daily dyett." Another Brother,
Robert Beale,* a little later, in 1636, is recorded as having
had a year's leave of absence on the King's service to
become Lieutenant of the Merhonneur in the expedition of
1635 — an appointment which shows him to have been no
mean seaman. For that ship., of 800 tons, built about
1570, was still one of the finest in the English Navy.f It
was not uncommon in the first forty years of the Hospital
for Brothers to get leave to take active service for a season.
There are records of men who joined the Swedish King —
Gustavus Adolphus. One of these perished " in the over-
throw at Revel " — i.e. one of the unsuccessful attempts in
the long siege. Another dies at the siege of Breda in 1643.
A Brother was expelled for joining the King against the
Parliament ; another for a similar offence (the proclivities
of the place were assuredly Royalist). One Calton was
put out, being convicted of misprision of treason. Another
for coining. Altogether the Masters of those days must
have had no easy task in keeping order amongst a set of
men who brought in with them, some of them, the swash-
buckling ways of the parts about Fleet Street and Shoe
Lane. It is no wonder that the Masters succeeded one
another in somewhat rapid sequence at that time.
We get a glimpse of one of the inner tragedies of the
place from the records concerning one Captayne Bell,
* But on April 21, 1642, the same Robert Beale with Gabriel
Marston and Robert Davys, having absented themselves without
permission of the Governors or Master in his Majesty's service
on the late Northern Expedition, found the Governors' Assembly
of a different temper, and were refused all concessions.
t Her real name was the Mary Honora, which soon became
the Mere Honneur, the Mer honneur, and even the Merit Honneur.
She had carried the flag of Suffolk at the siege of Cadiz and of Essex
in the Island Expedition.
228 EARLY DAYS OF BUTTON'S HOSPITAL
whose conduct to the Master (Francis Beaumont) was such
that the Governors sentenced him on February 27, 1622,
to be expelled unless he made apology on his knees before
the Master in the Great Hall in presence of all the officers
and Brothers. Two years later, on July 9, 1624, he had
failed to comply and was put forth. But perhaps he soon
found that poverty in a garret was harder than what had
been asked of him in the Hospital, and we find his name
back on the list. We do not know if the condition was
insisted on — one hopes that the turbulent old offender was
spared the indignity.
Here and there a man loses his place, being found to be
a married man — as Sir Robert Wingfield, one of those
Knights whom James had created in the Great Chamber
years before. The decree against marriage ran throughout
the Hospital and applied alike to all who lived inside the
walls. We read of a Preacher (William Ford, 1618)
displaced thereby. The Master might not be married.*
And even the Master Cooke in early years lost his place
for matrimony. So early as October 28, 1615, the
Governors issued an order that " no woman or stranger
might lodge in the Hospital." There were, however, two
matrons — there were no nurses till 1791 — so probably they
had to lodge out. I am not able to find the dates at which
these monastic institutions began to die out under the
inroads of matrimony.
Meanwhile, in the absence of most civilising influences,
life in the Brothers' quarters must have been something
of a Bear-garden. We find orders by the Governors
against drunkenness — any one guilty of it was to be sent
out till his case could be considered. Some years later
expulsion in such a case was made absolute. There was
grumbling and complaining ; the Butler was charged with
keeping a squirt to mitigate the strength of the beer
(spelt " Bear "). Into all these things the Governors
inquired with minute care but without often finding a
* The restriction proved helpful when Richard Steele, undaunted
by any question of fitness, applied to be made Master. The existence
of poor " Prue " saved the situation. The Governors fell back
on the statute of celibacy.
THE STATUTES 229
verdict for the plaintiffs. Indeed, it may here be said
that from first to last along the 300 years which have
passed over the Foundation the minute-books are evidence
of the thoroughness with which the Governors have watched
over the interests of their trust. One is amused, for
example, to find in this early period how, after a debate on
some burning question on the constitution of the Hospital
a Committee of Bishops, Judges, and Lords settle down to
consider what is to be done with the dripping (sewett).
And this is merely a typical example out of many.
A very suggestive order was that which the Governors
found it necessary to pass on Feb. 26, 1622, by which it
was enacted that none of the Brothers of the Hospital
" shall wear any weapons, long hair, coloured boots, spurs,
or any coloured shoes, feathers, or any Ruffian-like or
unseemly apparel, but such as becomes Hospital men to
wear." Also no Brother might presume to wear his hat
in presence of the Master except at dinner.
It was sound wisdom on their part to allow some time
to pass before crystallising their experience into statutes.
For the first twelve years or so they were content to
frame orders and to consider their policy as need arose.
It must be owned that, to judge from the minute-book,
they had soon collected a useful body of evidence as to
what was needed to produce chaos or order in such insti-
tutions. It can easily be understood that the sudden
bringing together of eighty old men of broken fortune and
free-lance life should have resulted in the admission,
amongst the better type, of some of the flotsam and jetsam
of those troubled times. Twelve years of experience
probably taught both Governors and Master most of the
situations which were likely to arise, and by 1627 they
had been able, with the aid of the Attorney-General, the
Bishop of Exeter, and Sir William Boyd, to draft
Statutes which were sealed by the seal of the Governors
on June 21, and received the signature of Charles I. They
remained the Statutes of the Foundation up to the year
1872, when the new scheme came into force.
One may pause here to note that on June 28, 1619,
230 EARLY DAYS OF BUTTON'S HOSPITAL
Francis Bacon, Lord Verulam, became a Governor, for
the administering of the Trust which he had fought so
hard to destroy. But on June 25, 1621, occurs the painful
minute which, after much preamble, declares that —
6
" the said right honourable ffrancis Lord Verulam Viscount
St Albans having on the third of May 1521 been by the
High Court of parliament adjudged that from henceforth
hee should for ever be uncapable of any office, place, or
employment, etc., etc. . . . The Governors . . . for the
causes aforesaid with one assent and consent remove the
said Right Honourable Francis Lord Verulam ... of
and from the place of a Governor, etc., etc."
The same year which saw the sealing of the statutes
contains the quaint order, more monastic in its spirit than
even the rule of the monastery, since women had been
buried within the Cloister in the days of the monks — that
no woman or womankind should be buried in Charter-
house either in the Chapel itself or in the new burial
ground, the plot of ground within the boundary wall on
the north which had been consecrated in 1616 (adjoining
Master's Garden).
Perhaps the most noticeable point in the Statutes of
1627 is the change in the definition of the status of the
Brothers. We surmise that already the Governors had
found some difficulty in excluding from the Hospital men
who did not reach the social standard which had been
intended. The Statute now ran as follows : —
" that none should be holden qualified for the place unless
they be gentlemen by descent and in poverty ; souldiers
that have borne arms by sea or land : merchants decayed
by pyracy or shipwreck : or servants in houshold to the
King and Queen's Majesty."
Upon this definition the Brothers continued to be elected
until 1642, when the first note of the coming spirit of
democracy is sounded and we find the following minute : —
" Upon hearing the words of the Letters Patent
CH4.PEL TOWER FROM MASTER'S LODGE.
1512.
1611, 1642, 1872 231
[June 22, 1611] touching the quality of the poor people to
be chosen and finding the words to be in general for poor
aged maimed or impotent people : It is therefore ordered
and declared that the orders and statutes formerly made
under common seal for limitation of what sort and qualities
the poor men shall be, shall not be any rule of limitation
to the Governors for choosing of pensioners but that the
direction given by the Letters patent be henceforth
followed according to the true meaning thereof."
In other words, the Governors fell back upon the
general terms employed in the Letters Patent of 1611,
ignoring and setting aside the Constitution of the Brother-
hood as decided on by the first Governors in 1613, which
had been emphasised and sanctioned by the Statutes of
1627, which had received the Royal assent. The latter
fact, indeed, was not likely to carry much weight, but far
otherwise, in the turning year of 1642. It was, by the way,
on this same afternoon of April 21, 1642, that the com-
mittee decided what to do with the dripping.
It is convenient at this point to insert, for ease of
comparison, the qualifications of the Brotherhood as
defined under the scheme of 1872, approved by the Charity
Commissioners.
" The Poor Brothers shall be deserving men of good
character, widowers or unmarried, in decayed circum-
stances, being or having been officers in the Army or
Navy, Clergymen, Merchants, or persons engaged in
trading, professional, agricultural, or other similar occupa-
tions, who have become reduced by misfortune or accident
without their own wilful default, and who shall be not
less than sixty years of age at the time of appointment,
unless in any special case the Governors shall see fit to
relax the restriction as to age in favour of a candidate
otherwise duly qualified, who may have become incapaci-
tated by illness, accident, or infirmity from exerting him-
self for his own maintenance. Provided that no person
who shall be blind or helpless from infirmity of mind or
body shall be eligible for appointment.
" No person shall be eligible for appointment as a
232 EARLY DAYS OF SUTTON'S HOSPITAL
Poor Brother, or shall be capable of retaining such appoint-
ment who shall be or become possessed of or entitled to the
clear yearly income of £60 * or property of that annual
value."
The minute-books give us no means of judging what
effect the decision of the Governors, in 1642, had upon the
character of the Foundation for the next eighteen years
till the Restoration. No doubt the *' Captains " whose
names we now read were of a slightly different type.
The Captains who came to Charterhouse doubtless now
wore, of their own choice, sad-coloured vesture and
featherless hats. The men of Cadiz and of the Armada
had ceased from troubling. The soldiers of Gustavus were
at rest. The new Captains and Lieutenants were doubt-
less those who had fought at Edgehill and Marston Moor,
at Newbury and Naseby, and, later, at Dunbar and
Worcester, or who had served at sea under the flag of
Blake or Monk. For the present, at any rate, their interests
were as carefully guarded as those of their forerunners.
But the times were out of joint, and evil days were to
depress the Brotherhood for a season.
The Chairman of the Governors, William Laud (every
Archbishop of Canterbury since 1611 has filled that post,
except between 1645 and 1660, when all bishops were got
rid of from the board) was not present at that assembly.
He had been in the Tower since March 1 of the previous
year. But he presently nominates a Gownboy, and there
is evidence that the order book must have been taken to
him in the Tower, since one order of Nov. 22, 1642, bears
his unmistakable autograph. But after that date, till
his death on Tower Hill in January, 1645, he does not
seem to have been allowed any further share in the govern-
ment of Charterhouse. This is not hard to explain, for we
find in 1643 that Parliament itself stepped in and took in
hand some of the internal affairs of the place. On Jan. 25
of that year the Schoolmaster, Robert Brooke, was expelled
as a sequel to a resolution by a Committee of the House of
* Since raised to £100.
Commons, who had sequestered him for " certen mis-
demeanors."
Brooke's misdemeanour was his avowed adherence to
the Royalist cause, and his having impressed his views
upon his pupils, two of whom were the poets Richard
Crashaw and Richard Lovelace. A month or two later, -,
March 7, 1643, we find that Daniel Tuttevill, the Preacher,
is expelled by an order of the House of Commons, his place
being filled by a divine named Thomas Foxley. The
organist suffered a like fate, and his office seems to have
been for the present suppressed. We read, too, presently,
of a Brother expelled for having joined the King against
the Parliament. These steps are reflected in the names
of the Governors who gradually took the place of those
of the earlier Royalist type. Laud perished in 1645.
Before the end of the year, Matthew Wren, Bishop of Ely,
and John Williams, Archbishop of York, were removed
for " certain causes known " (this became the formula) ;
while William Juxon, Bishop of London, on the plea of
infirmity, though he presently hunted the best pack of
hounds in England (so says the enthusiastic Whitelocke),
had resigned, and no bishops remained upon the board.
Sir John Finch, Lord Chief Justice, had been removed as
early as 1641. The empty places were filled by men of
the Parliamentary party. Manchester and Lord Howard
of Escricke joined the board, from which both of them were
themselves to be removed when the rift between them-
selves and Cromwell had grown deep. One by one all or
most of the moderates were removed, resigned or died.
The names of Essex, Oliver St. John, John Selden, William
Lenthall (speaker of the Long Parliament), Sir Harry Vane,
Lord Fairfax, and Bulstrode Whitelocke represent clearly
enough the older Parliamentary party. But after 1550
we read the names of John Bradshaw, the regicide — I
cannot find that he ever attended a meeting or took any
share in administering his trust — Oliver Cromwell, Charles
Fleetwood, Sir Arthur Heselrigge (so spelt by him in the
book), General Philip Skippon, and Protector Richard Crom-
well— truly an historical document this minute-book of ours.
234 EARLY DAYS OF BUTTON'S HOSPITAL
To return to 1645. The miseries of the Civil War had
already gone far to ruin many a farmer, and the necessities
of life had, as always, risen in proportion. A deficit of
£1500 was recorded in the funds of the Hospital. The
reserve chest was called upon for £500, and the salaries of
officers and servants were diminished all round. The diet
of the Brothers and Scholars was also greatly reduced —
more days of abstinence were inserted, and all feast days
abolished, save that of Dec. 12, Founder's Day. These
measures perhaps met the immediate pressure, but it is
clear that for many years the Foundation suffered severely.
It would seem, too, that as the stress of the situation
between King and Parliament grew fiercer, the Governors
fell away, for a year or two, from the keen interest which
they have at all other times shown. For two years, from
May, 1648 to April, 1650, there are no Governors'
assemblies recorded, but after the death of the King they
occur again with frequency. In 1650 we find that Parlia-
ment once more takes the affairs of Charterhouse into
view and provides for its management, with the following
resolution which I find entered in the minute-book : —
" Die Mercurii 17 Aprilisl650. Resolved by the Parlia-
mentthat such of the present Governors of Sutton's Hospitall
who have subscribed the Engagement or the major part of
them doe proceed on in all the business of the Hospitall
untill the Parliament takes further order.
" HEN SCOBELL,
" Chi8 Parliament."
That same winter, on Dec. 9, 1650, his Excellency
Oliver Cromwell, " Captain Generall of ye forces raised by
Parliament," is made a Governor in place of the Earl of
Manchester removed. He attended in all six meetings
during the two and a half years in which he remained a
Governor. None of these meetings had in them anything
outside of the ordinary routine of business except that, at
* One of the iron-bound chests in which the early Governors
kept their ready cash is now in Charterhouse Museum. It has
always been traditionally known as Thomas Sutton's chest.
CROMWELL AT GOVERNORS' MEETINGS 235
the meeting of Jan. 19, 1652, the Governors passed a
stringently-worded order that any Brother proved guilty
of drunkenness should lose his position — a provision which
reminds us that Cavalier and Roundhead must have still
possessed something in common. On none of these
occasions did Oliver sign the book — one remembers his
growing hatred of writing in any shape. But once Oliver
Cromwell came down to Charterhouse perhaps in wrath.
He was not a member of the Standing Committee, and yet
on this occasion he attended one of its meetings. It is
easy to see the reason why, for on that date occurs the
following entry in the minutes of Committee.
"Oct. 8, 1651. Present William Lenthall, Oliver
Cromwell, Sergeant Glyn, Sir Henry Vane, John Selden,
John Gurdon. Wee the said committee doe likewise think
fitt that the Arms of the late King standing above the
Gates and in several other places of the said Hospitall be
forthwith pulled down and defaced and that the Arms of
the Commonwealth be putt up in the same places at the
Costs and Charges of the said Hospitall."
This time we find Oliver Cromwell's signature in the
book.* It would seem indeed that the Governors had
been meeting in the Governors' Room with the Royal
Arms above their heads in the Great Fireplace, and Oliver,
who had attended a full Governors' meeting, had not failed
to notice the incongruity. The order was doubtless
obeyed, but I am inclined to believe that the offending
panel was preserved by some official and replaced at the
Restoration, and that we look to-day on the very panel
which excited the wrath of the Captain-General.f
When Cromwell became Protector he resigned his
place as Governor, recommending General Philip Skippon
as his successor. Skippon was duly elected. It is easy
to see why Oliver resigned. Apart from the heavy pre-
occupations which more and more beset him, he would,
* But after careful comparison of the signature with those in
the British Museum I find it hard to reconcile them, and I am doubt-
ful if Oliver wrote it. It may have been added by the chairman
or clerk as a necessary evidence of Oliver's wish and attendance.
t The arms are of James I.
236 EARLY DAYS OF SUTTON'S HOSPITAL
have found himself, when he came to Charterhouse, sitting
at the same table with Vane and St. John, Lenthall and
Heselrigge, and others — men who were now avowedly
unfriendly to his action and policy. It would have been
courting difficult situations on a field where he would
have had no advantage of position over them. But he
did not forget Charterhouse, nor yet his own methods of
handling affairs. For in the following year he seems to
have sent in a request — we can guess what sort of form it
would have taken — that the Governors should elect as a
Gownboy one John Sharwell, son of Mary Sharwell, a
widow.
We can read between the lines of a memorandum
signed by Sir Harry Vane, Oliver St. John, and Lord
Essex on behalf of the Governors — the date is June 5,
1654 — in which, after a short preamble, they say that they
have assured themselves of the fitness in all respects of
John Sharwell to become a Poore Scholler * (Gownboy)
on the recommendation of the Lord Protector. And they
therefore advise that he should have the next vacancy
after the admission of the persons already nominated and
waiting. They guard themselves, however, by the following
clause : " Provided that this shall not be prejudice or
hinderance to said Governors of said Hospu in making of
future Elections or be drawne into President [precedent]."
John SharwelPs name appears in the admission list for
June 5, 1654, and the Governors confirm the election by a
minute of their assembly of June 19. But it is clear that
this kind of reserved acceptance of his will was not to the
taste of the Protector, for one year later is found a letter,
quoted by Carlyle in his Life and Letters of Cromwell, in
which he once more imposes his wish — this time practically
* By a strange error the latest historian of Charterhouse describes
this as a request by Cromwell for the admission of " a young man
described as a Poore Scholler as a Pensioner." The words " Popre
Scholler " are, of course, the equivalent of a Gownboy or Foundation
Scholar. The same writer speaks of a diplomatic answer returned
by the Governors, in which they compliment the Protector on the
care and humanity he had shown as a Governor. These words
do not occur in any record accessible to me. They arc not on the
minutes.
OLIVER CROMWELL 237
a command — on the Governors. Nor does he even address
them, but sends his order to Secretary Thurloe. The
letter runs as follows : —
"To Mr. Secretary Thurloe,
" Whitehall, 28 July, 1655.
" You receive from me, this 28th instant, a petition
from Margaret Beacham, desiring the admission of her
son into the Charterhouse ; whose husband was employed
one day in an important secret service, which he did
effectually, to our own great benefit, and the Common-
wealth's. I have wrote under it a common reference to the
Commissioners ; but I mean a great deal more : That it shall
be done without their debate or consideration of the matter.
And so do you privately hint to . I have not the
particular shining bauble for crowds to gaze at or kneel
to, but To be short, I know how to deny Petitions
and, whatever I think proper for outward form, to ' refer '
to any officer or office, I expect that such my compliance
with custom shall be looked upon as an indication of my
will and pleasure to have the thing done. Thy true
friend,
" OLIVER P."
Whether this characteristic letter ever reached the
Governors is unknown to us. The name of Beacham does
not occur among the admissions of this period, and there
is not a word in the orders or minutes of the Governors on
the point. So far as anything is on record it was never
before them. But it must be remembered that, if a
discussion took place in which the Protector's proposal
was negatived, such discussion (to judge by the case of
James II presently to be noted) might have been intention-
ally suppressed from the minutes. And with this incident
the Protector and Charterhouse part company for ever.
At the Restoration it was inevitable that the Parlia-
mentary Governors who had displaced the Royalists should,
in turn, yield place to others. One or two were removed,
St. John, Skippon, Hesilrigge, and one or two others were
R
238 EARLY DAYS OF BUTTON'S HOSPITAL
offered the opportunity of resigning and did so. Man-
chester Howard of Escrick, the Bishop of Ely, Lord
Northumberland were restored to office, and a period which
must have brought with it constant anxieties was at an
end. In saying this, however, it is only just to remark
that, save in the period of greatest dislocation from 1645-50,
the management of the Foundation was as complete and
painstaking as at any other period.
And from that time forward, with one or two exceptions,
presently to be mentioned, Sutton's Hospital touches out-
side History only through the great historical names which
appear on the list of its Governors, or through the distinction
of its Pensioners or of its Scholars. Here are the exceptions.
On June 24, 1685, we read the following : —
" Whereas James Duke of Monmouth, a Governor of
this Hospital stands convicted and attainted of treason
by Parliament by means whereof he is becom uncapable
to holde the same place, wee doo therefore according to
the power given us by the letters patent of the foundation
of this Hospitall nominate the Right Honourable Lawrence
Earl of Rochester Lord High Treasurer to be and continue
one of the Governors of the Hospital in his stead," etc., etc.
The attainder had been passed on June 21, and this
order of the Governors was issued three weeks before the
battle of Sedgmoor. There is a tradition at Charterhouse
that some of the portraits in the Master's Lodge, which
include those of Monmouth, Charles I, Buckingham, and
Talbot, were the property of Anne Scott, Duchess of
Buccleugh, Monmouth's ill-used wife, and that she left
them in the care of the Master, William Erskine, her
friend. The pictures have been known, one cannot say
how long, as the Monmouth pictures.
Once more, and for the last time, in 1687, when the
Stuart dynasty was nearing its end, Charterhouse was
destined to make History.
It came indeed strangely near to making it in that
particular shape in which the seven bishops actually made
JAMES II AND THE GOVERNORS 289
it a twelvemonth later. James II nominated, and desired
the Assembly of Governors to elect on his nomination to
the Brotherhood, one Andrew Popham, a Romanist. The
minute of the assembly of Jan. 17 in that year runs as
follows : —
" Whereas his Maty by his two Lords hath nominated
and appointed Andrew Popham Gent to be a pensoner in
this Hospitall in his Matys ... in wich two there is a
Clause that his Maty is gratiously disposed to dispense
with the sending any oath or oathes unto the sayd Andrew
Popham or requiring of him any subscripton or recogniton
or other Act or Acts in conformity to the doctrine and
discipline of the Church of England as the same is now
established wee are of opinion that for the present that
the admission of the sayd Andrew Popham bee suspended
until wee shall have considered of an applicaton to his
Maty therein."
The minute, of course, gives no clue to the discussion
or incidents which preceded the resolution. But Macaulay,
in his History, makes use of a publication, An Account
of the Late Proceedings at Charterhouse, published in 1689,
the year after the flight of James. That account, and
consequently Macaulay's description of the incident, can
be shown to be inaccurate in several points. On the other
hand, some of its details could only have been supplied by
some one who was present, and they bear the impress of
truth. The question was introduced by the Master,
Thomas Burnett, the man of the quiet face, whose beautiful
portrait by Sir Godfrey Kneller hangs to-day in the Master's
Lodge. He urged that the election of a Romanist was
beyond their powers and contrary to their constitution as
fixed by Act of Parliament.* "What is that to the
purpose ? " asked a courtier (not identified) who was a
Governor. The old Duke of Ormond, who was attending
one of the last of his Governors' Assemblies, replied, " I
* In 1623 or 1024 the Governors had applied for an Act of
Parliament which, as we learn by a minute of 1624, had for some
unknown reason miscarried. The Bill was duly obtained in March,
1627 (Old Style), confirming the Foundation.
240 EARLY DAYS OF BUTTON'S HOSPITAL
think it is very much to the purpose. An Act of Parlia-
ment," continued the Patriarch of the Cavalier party, " is
in my judgment no light thing." Chancellor Jeffreys, the
King's worst adviser, was sitting that day at the table in
the Governors' Room, and so were one or two others who
are likely to have voted with him. But that day and in
that room the brutal Chancellor's voice was no more than
any other man's. When the majority voted against the
admission of the King's nominee, Jeffreys rose in fury
and walked out of the Governors' Room,* followed by
others of the minority, so that — says Macaulay, following
" the account " — there was no quorum left, and no formal
reply could be made to the mandate. Here, however,
Macaulay seems to be in error. The minutes of the day
show that the Popham question stood early in the agenda
paper, and that other business was transacted after it.
Strange to say, the minutes of the next meeting of Feb. 2
are omitted, perhaps intentionally. But on June 24
occurs a brief minute that a copy of the letter to the King,
now drawn up, be forwarded by the Registrar to Lord
Middleton, Chief Secretary of the State.
London rang with the incident for some months.
Jeffreys swore — he could swear, it is said — vengeance and
talked of prosecuting the Governors in the King's Bench.
But James, purblind as he was, with a double measure of
that purblindness which always made a Stuart unable to
see the simplest signs of the times, yet would seem to have
felt that a body of Governors which numbered in its ranks
the names of Ormond and Danby and others to whom
his throne had owed so much, and who, moreover, were
armed with a constitution sanctioned by his own father,
Charles I, was an ill body to prosecute. At any rate,
before James had time to follow the advice of Jeffreys, if
ever he meant to do so, he had other things to think of.
No more is heard of Andrew Popham. It may be
mentioned here that every Sovereign since James I, as
well as the Protector, has been by accepted tradition —
* Jeffreys never again walked up the Great Staircase to a
Governors' meeting.
THE BROTHERS 241
there is no statute on the point — a Governor of Charter-
house, and it has also been the tradition to place the
Royal Consorts upon the roll, but Royalties do not take
any part in the administration of the Foundation. On
no occasion, save in the instance just recorded, has it been
necessary for the Governors to resist the Royal wish in
any particular.
From 1611 to 1911 more than 2,000 Brothers have
entered the Foundation. The House has sheltered many
men who have done good and even distinguished work in
life before the evening came, but the fact, once before
mentioned, that no record is preserved in our books of the
antecedents of the nominees, has been unfortunate, and
it deprives us of a great deal of knowledge which would
be interesting. We find in the Dictionary of National
Biography only a few records. But entry into that
Valhalla is not the final verdict. One may quote, however,
the well-known names which reappear in every history
of Charterhouse. Omitting the earliest Brothers with
whom we have already dealt, the name of Elkanah Settle
(1648 to 1724) comes earliest upon the list. It might
be hard in these days to collect a score of men who had
ever read a line of his poetry. Yet in his day it was fiercely
debated, says Wood, at the universities whether he or
Dryden were the greater poet, the younger generation
inclining to Settle. But Settle's success — Betterton took
the leading part in some of his plays, Cambyses, for example,
now forgotten— was not wholly one of merit. Politics
and poetry were a common, though an impossible, mixture
in those days, and Rochester and his party set up Settle
against Dryden only to drop him when they had done
with him. Dryden was unwise enough to give him a
place as Doeg in his Absalom and Achitophel. But he made
a shrewd prophecy when he foretold that his rival would
one day be writing plays for Bartholomew Fair. The
forecast came true almost to the letter. Poor Settle,
after holding the post — it is said he was the last to hold it —
of " City Poet," is found writing love ballads and poesies
242 EARLY DAYS OF SUTTON'S HOSPITAL
for maid servants at half a crown the poem, and presently
he has to act the part at a show of a dragon, in a suit of
green leather. Then at last some one takes pity on the
old man of letters, rescues him from his dragon, and
nominates him to Charterhouse, where he died a year or
two later (Feb. 12, 1723).
Alexander Macbean (d. 1784), who had helped
Dr. Johnson as his amanuensis, and had some literary
ability of his own, ended his days here. And so would,
if he had not been expelled for disobedience, Zachariah
Williams, who comes within the circle of Johnson as
father of that Miss Anna Williams who, when she lived
in Bolt Court, so often shared a cup of tea — say, rather,
seventeen cups of tea — with the great doctor. At the same
time the Hospital gave shelter to Stephen Gray, who is
universally recognised as one of the chief pioneers of elec-
tricity.* He was made a Fellow of the Royal Society
while he was a Brother of Charterhouse. In recent times,
Madison Morton, who as the author of Box and Cox has
given the world more harmless merriment than falls to the
lot of most men, Charles Macfarlane (d. 1858), and Francis
Espinasse, the friend of Thomas Carlyle, and himself a
man of note in his day, have been amongst the Brothers.
I have already said that in the early days of the Hospital
the condition of comfort was, judged by the standard
of our own day, not high. But judged by the standard
of its own day it was probably in due relation to that
which prevailed outside. The Brothers looked after
themselves or had a claim on the services of a very limited
number of men servants in their ancient quarters, which
had been constructed within the fine old monastery barns.
It was not till 1796 that " nurses " were provided to attend
* Stephen Gray demonstrated before the Royal Society his
great invention. And in the Courts of Charterhouse he set up
wooden poles carrying silk thread (isolated of course) which success-
fully transmitted the current. He had indeed proved his case.
It was, however, merely a succ&s d'estime. Many years were to
pass ; before his discovery was taken up in practical shape. Possibly
the old scientist's character, " particular and unamiable," did not
assist him. Yet it is certain that he initiated the system which has
changed the social conditions of the earth.
THE BROTHERS 243
to the wants of the Brothers. The duties of these nurses
correspond to those of the " bedmakers " of an Oxford
or Cambridge College. So, too, it was left to recent
times to provide the services of trained matron and nursing-
sister or sisters in time of sickness. But all along the
course of the three centuries which have passed since the
foundation, the position of the Brothers has been steadily
improved, as the records of the Order Book prove. The
pension and allowances have been from time to time
augmented. The original pension was £5 per annum
without further allowance. The last increase, in 1909,
brought it to £36 per annum with an extra allowance
of 35 shillings per week during the four weeks of summer
holiday, or £43 in all, with allowances of coal and light.
The diet has also undergone great improvement. In
1914 the pension has been increased to £40, or £47 in all.*
But undoubtedly the changes which most affected the
conditions of living for the better were those which took
place from the year 1826 to the year 1842 and onwards.
These changes were, by common consent, due to the energy
and capacity of William Hale, who was Preacher of the
Hospital from 1823 to 1841, and became Master in 1842.
The old Brothers' quarters were ordered to be presently
pulled down, and gave place to the two new courts known
as the Pensioners' Court and the Preacher's Court. The
earlier buildings had lain along the west side of what is
now Preacher's Court, and at the northern end of the old
wing a continuation had run diagonally across from south-
west to north-east. In 1826 three sides of the Pensioners'
Court, giving twenty-eight sets of apartments, were com-
menced. In 1827 the fourth side was begun, and in the
year 1828, the order was given for the building of the
east wing of the Preacher's Court. This included a house
for the Preacher, who hitherto had lived outside, and there
is no doubt that this departure, which was entirely due to
the advice of Archdeacon Hale, very largely affected the
* In 1919 the Governors, with the consent of the Charity Com-
missioners, raised the total sum of pension and allowances provision-
ally to £70 10s.
244 EARLY DAYS OF BUTTON'S HOSPITAL
well-being of the Hospital. In 1829 the order was given
to rebuild the west wing of the Preacher's Court (the old
quarters), but the work was suspended till 1839. By 1840
the whole of the two new courts had been completed.
The life of the Brothers now followed very much the lines
of life in a college of Oxford or Cambridge, Each Brother
lives in his own room, which has in it a recess for a bed ;
there are, however, a few sets of two rooms to each Brother.
These rooms open on to a common staircase — there are
sixteen staircases in all — which are attended to by nurses.
A certain number of rooms are set aside as an infirmary
for the very infirm or sick, but each brother is still nursed
in his own separate room and not in one general ward.
In other respects, as well as in the arrangements of the
living rooms, the life has its resemblances to that of college.
Regulations require each Brother to attend chapel either
in the morning (9.30) or evening (6.0 in winter, 7.0 in sum-
mer) at choice,* and at 11.0 a.m. on Sunday, and to attend
daily dinner in Hall (2 p.m.). He can always obtain leave
of absence for any reasonable purpose. He is free to go
where he will up to 11 p.m., or by an easy process of
extension, up to 12 p.m. He has one month of holiday
(July) in each year with full allowance beyond his pension.
It is in the discretion of the Master to grant him a further
extension up to six weeks beyond the holiday month with
a minor allowance ; and further leave at times without
that allowance. Each Brother receives four and a quarter
tons of coal a year, with candles. He has also the services
of a resident medical officer, matron, and nursing sister.
He is given chair, table, fender, bed, carpet, curtains
for his room, which, however, is not otherwise furnished,
as it is found that Brothers greatly prefer to bring in some
furniture of their own, and also they naturally prefer
some exercise of their own taste in their surroundings.
Visitors are allowed up to 10 p.m. A Brother of Charter-
house has a vote for Finsbury parliamentary district.
If any one imagines that all Brothers are at all times
* Up to 1840 the regulations required two attendances daily
at chapel.
THE LIFE OF A BROTHER 245
satisfied, and that no one ever grumbles, he must also
imagine that the Governors of Sutton Hospital have secured
a succession of angels rather than of old gentlemen. The
Brotherhood of Charterhouse is not, any more than any other
assemblage of similar human beings, free from its percentage
of men who estimate their privileges not from the point of
view of what has been given to them, but rather of what
has not. Nor can it be supposed that in a gathering of
sixty to eighty men there should be absent all examples
of men who are not worthy of their place, or who find the
very small amount of discipline indicated by a chapel,
a hall, and a return home at eleven or twelve at night,
an irksome degree of restriction. It is impossible to read
through the many volumes of minutes and orders since
1614 without some amusement. History — it is very
small history, to be sure — repeats itself over and over
again. There are still, as in 1620, in each decade the men
here and there who believe, or say they do, that the butler
metaphorically keeps a squirt for watering the beer. The
Governors of to-day are called upon to do much the same
set of duties as those which claimed the attention of Lord
Bacon, William Laud, and Oliver Cromwell, of Walpole
and Rockingham, of Pitt and Fox, of Peel and Wellington,
of Palmerston and Russell. The interests, some very
great, some very small, which have to be guarded are
much the same. The complaints and appeals have a
strong family likeness. And the rather too common black
sheep of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries is of
much the same colour as his much rarer counterpart
in the nineteenth and twentieth. And here it should
be said that the proportion of the unworthy to the worthy
is very small. The vast majority live honourable and
self-respecting lives, and Button's intention is well fulfilled
in them. For three hundred years his Hospital has helped
to meet a great national need, without ever receiving
or asking for one penny of public money. The particular
class for which it provides is one for whom poverty has
very special sorrows. Sutton's Hospital may be regarded
as a civil resident pension for gentlemen of fallen fortune,
246 EARLY DAYS OF BUTTON'S HOSPITAL
for whom the State, in the nature of things, cannot be
expected to provide either pension or maintenance.
It has done much in its three hundred years of existence,
and it is to be deplored that since 1880, owing to the
depreciation in land values — much of the endowment
depending on agricultural rents — the number of Brothers,
fixed by Sutton at eighty, has sunk to sixty, and has
at one time been as low as fifty-four. Owing to a reputa-
tion, which has clung to it from the beginning, of very
great wealth, it has never since 1611 received any legacy
of importance, probably a unique instance in the history
of such institutions. If one of those splendid gifts or
legacies which from time to time fall to institutions and
movements designed for the relief of distress and the
bettering of the lot of mankind should one day come the
way of Charterhouse, it would be possible, once more, to
give the benefits of the Hospital to the full number of
eighty, and at the same time increase the material comfort
of the Brothers in various particulars. The giver would
have, through the evidence of the last three hundred years,
the knowledge that his gift would be well employed in the
relief of a form of distress which is not the least acute
among the many forms of suffering which human beings
can be called upon to bear.
COSTUME OF EARLY GOWNBOYS.
A BROTHER.
CHAPTER XXII
THE SCHOOL
SUTTON'S double foundation was the outcome in part
of the man's own personality and in part of the spirit
of the age in which he lived. The Brotherhood represents
the first of these two forces, begotten as it was of Sutton's
own sympathies for the type of men with whose lives
and distresses his own life had brought him in touch,
while the School Foundation was typical of that faith
in education which the Renaissance had everywhere
brought with it, and which in England, especially in the
Post-Reformation days of the period, showed itself in
the frequent foundations of Grammar Schools and Colleges.
If in my previous chapter I have at all succeeded
in showing that Sutton's first set of Governors knew and
rightly interpreted his intentions with regard to the
social class from whom his Brothers were to be selected,
then I need hardly go over the same ground to show that
his intentions with regard to the social status of his Founda-
tion Scholars, " Gownboys," must have been of like texture.
It must at least be conceded that he must have meant
that both sides of his Foundation should be of one caste.
He placed them both within the same walls, to be selected
by the same Governors, to worship in the same chapel,
to be ruled by the same officers, served by the same ser-
vants, fed from the same kitchen, and even to be tended,
at first, by the same matron. And though experience
presently showed the necessity for some kind of separation
between the Brothers and the Schoolboys, yet they were
essentially one Foundation.
247
248 THE SCHOOL
At their very first assembly, June 30, 1613, the Gover-
nors, it will be remembered, had resolved as follows : —
" Item. No children to be placed there whose parents
have any estate of lands to leave unto them but onlie
the children of poore men that want meanes to bringe
them up."
Though this order was clearly intended to exclude
the son of any man of assured estate or property, it
was as clearly not intended to exclude the sons of pro-
fessional men — soldiers, sailors, clergy, doctors, lawyers,
etc. — the straitness of whose means still made them
" poore men " though not of the indigent poor. And
this is shown by the fact that the very first list of Gown-
boys elected on July 19, 1614, includes boys whose fathers
wrote " esquire " or " gent " after their names. The
first Gownboy of all is an instructive case. James
Mullens was elected alone at the first assembly, June 30,
1613, and was the son of a surgeon who either then or
later was Surgeon to St. Bartholomew's and to St. Thomas'
Hospitals. But in 1621 the Governors resolve that James
Mullens is to cease to be a Gownboy if it be true that his
father is possessed of £400 a year. In short, the quali-
fication was very much that which prevailed in similar
foundations in other great schools. It has been often
urged that Charterhouse is an instance where the intention
of the Founder has been perverted from the first, and the
trust applied to a class for whom it was not meant. And
the words " poore scholler " " poore men " are quoted
in proof of this perversion. It must not be forgotten that
the very body of men who created those phrases at their
first assembly gave us an object lesson in their own inter-
pretation of their phrases by electing at that same assembly
James Mullens, the son of a surgeon of evident capacity,
though of small income, as they believed.* We have,
indeed, to remind ourselves that the word " poore " was
* The increase of the father's income to £400 a year may, of
course, have occurred — it probably did — some years after his son's
nomination.
THE SCHOLARS 249
used at that date in a broader, and perhaps a truer,
sense than that which it has come to have to-day.
The School Foundation of Charterhouse was never
intended by its Founder for the " indigent poor " — as we
now understand that phrase, nor for the poor of the working
classes, nor of the artisan classes, but rather for the " poore "
of quite a different social rank, namely, of a rank corre-
sponding to that whose needs were provided for in Sutton's
Foundation for the " poore Brothers."
It may be well, at this point, to give a few typical
cases of Gownboys nominated in the years immediately
following the first foundation.* The instances in which
we know the parentage of early Gownboys are few, and
even here our knowledge is accidental, and from external
sources, as no record was kept in the warrant books or
order books. Danyell Colbye (1614) is son of Thomas
Collbye, Esq. — the title of Esquire still having a definite
social value in that day. Joseph Henshawe (1624), after-
wards Bishop of Peterborough, was son of Thomas Hen-
shawe, Solicitor-General of Ireland. Anthony Lawe (1614)
was nephew of John Lawe, Sutton's executor, and one of
the first Governors. Richard White (1619), son of Sir
Richard White, Knighte. Robert Bickerton (1626), son
of a servant of the Prince (Charles). Richard Crashaw
(spelt Crosshow) the poet, 1631, son of William Crashaw,
a clergyman. And in 1628, Thomas Lovelace, son of Sir
William Lovelace, Knight, of an old Kentish family,
was nominated on the warrant of Charles I. Sir William,
of Lovelace-Bethersden, had been killed that year at the
siege of Grolle in Holland, " after about 30 years in the
warres, and left his lady rich only in great store of Children."
Thomas never came to Gownboys, being, it would seem,
over age. His brother, Colonel Richard Lovelace, the
poet, and author of To AUhea from Prison, was later in
the school as an oppidan.
It is not necessary to quote further from this early list.
Mr. Bower Marsh, in his admirable preface to his list of
Alumni Carthusiani, says with regard to the system of
* These cases are quoted from Alumni Carthiisiani.
250 THE SCHOOL
nominations from 1613 to its abolition in 1872 : " In
examining at the same time the grounds on which nomi-
nations have been sought for, and the probable reasons
for which they have been granted, the decision would seem
broadly to lie between the claims of poverty and of
influence, and, in general, the award to have been carried
away by what may be termed influential poverty." He
quotes the evidence of Archdeacon Hale before the Com-
mission of 1862 : "I should say persons exceedingly
well connected but really poor." This Commission and
evidence, of course, referred to Gownboys of Archdeacon
Hale's period. My own days in Gownboys fell within
the nine years from 1856 to 1864, and I should endorse
the statement of Archdeacon Hale. There were boys
who were closely connected with titled families, a few near
relations of the Governors themselves, sons of officers,
clergymen, etc. But I cannot remember any of whom
it could be said that, so far as the money qualification went,
they were unfit to receive the benefits of the Foundation.
And I may say at once, after thirty-three years' experience
of the School since the system of competitive scholar-
ships has been introduced, that those scholarships now fall to
the sons of men whose average income is greatly in excess
of that which was possessed by the parents of the nomi-
nated Gownboys. The reason is obvious. Few boys
of under fourteen could have a first-rate chance of obtaining
an open scholarship on any of the great Public School
Foundations unless their parents have been in a position
to provide them, for some years previously, with an
expensive education at a preparatory school. The clause
which gives the Governing Body the right to withhold
one of these scholarships, if a parent appears to be too well-
to-do to justify his accepting the Foundation benefit, does
not effectively meet the case. The disappearance of the
nomination system has, no doubt, played doubly into the
hands of those who have, rather than of those who need.
That abuses under the old system must have occurred
within the 260 years during which it lasted is a probability
which we may well admit, but, so far as can be judged,
PROFESSIONS AND TRADES 251
the probability is even greater, that in the vast majority
of cases Sutton's bounty reached the men for whom he
meant it, and to whom it was a Godsend in educating their
children in their own station of life.
But however the early Governors acted with regard
to the choice of " poore schollers," their provision for the
future of their Gownboys on their exit from the School was
marked by a bold common sense which was not, however,
destined to survive. The boy who was by acquirements
and promise fit for the University, and for the professions
to which it was an entrance, was to be sent there with an
exhibition. But the boy who was " unfitt for learning,"
or " less apt for learning than some are," was to be sent
out to a different career. He was to be " apprenticed "
to a solicitor's office, to a business or trade, or even to a
handicraft.* They were alive to the fact that, even in
higher social ranks, a large number of individuals are
born who have no bent or fitness for brain work, or even
clerk's work, but were designed by nature for handwork,
or a craft of some kind. However, when a Gownboy in
the first days had made his entry, he was to go out by the
door which seemed to lead him to his fittest work in life.
And so one Gownboy would go out to end his life, via the
University, as a bishop or a judge, while his friend, who
had sat beside him in Gownboy Writing School or Hall,
went out to make saddlery. It sounds very pathetic.
But it was less pathetic after all, perhaps, than the
occasional fate of a man who was tempted out of his true
path by the high rewards that presently came to be offered.
For the University Exhibitions which had begun at £20
had, by the end of the London days, become £80 for three
years, and £100 for the fourth, with even a further pro-
longation. It is true that the lump sum given to an
" apprentice," i.e. the sum which might be given to an
outgoing Gownboy who was to become a solicitor, a
* It must be remembered that the word " apprenticeship " was used
in that day not merely with regard to trade or handicraft, but also
with regard to clerkships, and the like. At the abolition of the
apprentice system the word " articled " took its place in the latter
instances.
252 THE SCHOOL
soldier, a man of business, had risen to £100. But the
University prize loomed larger still for the parent whose
mind was not clear as to his son's profession. The mischief
would have been less if a high standard had been main-
tained. But towards the end the test was very merciful.
Many an exhibitioner got through — the test was not
competitive, but to qualify — with barely enough learning
to get a pass degree. The change of system since 1872,
by which a limited number only of University Exhibitions
are given by competition, has made an improvement in
that respect.
From the very first the Governors empowered the
schoolmaster (headmaster) and the usher (second master) —
the office was abolished in 1872 — to take pupils other
than Gownboys. Without this provision it is doubtful
if the School could have obtained the reputation which was
soon to belong to it. For the Governors, at no time before
1872, recognised the existence of any masters save these
two. But the salary of the schoolmaster was £20 per
annum and that of the usher was £10. It was not till
1658 that the headmaster's salary was raised to £100 per
annum. And multiply as we may to bring these salaries
into terms of modern money, we cannot obtain from them
a result which shall make the wage of a headmaster of
that day equal to the wage of many an assistant master
of to-day in the earliest stages of his career. The re-
inforcement, therefore, of their slender salary by the
right to take boarders and day-boys was not merely a bless-
ing to those men who shaped the first famous Carthusians,
but it was of great value to the School by enabling the
Governors to secure a better type of man for the post.
And, furthermore, it freed the schoolmaster and usher
from an impossible position. Without that concession
they would have been called upon — two men alone —
to teach forty boys ranging from the age of ten to the age
of eighteen — a school in which effective grading by age
or ability was impossible. The addition of two or three
assistant masters, paid out of the school fees of the non-
Gownboys, alone made it possible. The schoolmaster
THE MASTERS OF THE SCHOOL 253
and usher were further hampered by the untaught con-
dition of many of the nominees, who were pitchforked
into the Foundation in such a stage of ignorance as to make
the School unworkable. In the statutes of 1627, therefore,
the clause appears : —
" Nor shall any be admitted but such as the School-
master shall find and approve to be well entred in Learning
answerable to his age at the time of his admittance."
The difficulty did not disappear, however. In 1653
the Governors, finding that the schoolmaster had rejected
certain nominees, gave an order that they should be
admitted and specially instructed — a condition which might
have well driven the unhappy schoolmasters to despair.
The " great damage and discouragement " which they
suffered thereby was described in an order of the Governors
in 1672, which ordained for the future an entrance exami-
nation.
But however great the disadvantages under which
the early masters laboured from being called upon to
develop the nucleus of the Foundation into a great School,
it is certain that they came well through the trial. The
School was already well established in its fame when
Addison and Steele were members of it. It is to be re-
gretted that the attitude of the Governors towards other
than Gownboys, however right from their point of view,
has made it impossible for us to trace or to describe the
growth of the whole School as a corporate body. No
complete list of masters, and no complete list of members
of the School is found before 1800. The list of school-
masters and ushers and of Gownboys alone is preserved
among our records. And it follows from this that our
list of distinguished Carthusians is a mutilated list. Many
of the names of boarders and day-boys who reached dis-
tinction are probably quite unknown to us,* the names
* It is, for example, merely a happy accident which enables
us to say that Richard, 7th Earl Mtzwilliam, was a Carthusian. In
the Library of the Fitzwilliam Museum which he founded is a small
pencil drawing of the statue of Marcus Aurelius, which was given
in 1759 by Fitzwilliam, when a boy at Charterhouse, to Isaac Cookson
of Newcastle.
S
254 THE SCHOOL
only of a few of very special fame emerging for us. It is,
however, plain to us, even on this imperfect evidence, that
the non-Foundation portion of the School contributed its
full share to the honours of the place from first to last.
Thus Richard Crashaw (1613-1649) was a Gownboy, but
Richard Lovelace (1618-1658) was an Oppidan. Isaac
Barrow and Richard Steele (1672-1729) were Gownboys,
but Joseph Addison (1672-1719) was an Oppidan. So,
too, John Wesley (1703-1791); Sir William Blackstone
(1723-1780); Lord Ellenborough (1750-1818); Baron
Alderson (1787-1857); Bishop Conn of Shirlwall, the
historian ; General Sir Robert S. S. Baden-Powell were
all Gownboys in the London Foundation. But Thomas
Lovel Beddoes, the poet (1803-1849); George Grote,
the historian (1794-1871) ; William Makepeace Thackeray
(1811-1863, once in Penny's House, 26-28 Wilderness
Row, and afterwards with Mrs. Boyes, No. 8, in the Square) ;
John Leech (1817-1864, in Churton's House in the Square) ;
Sir Charles Eastlake, P.R.A. (1793-1865); Sir Henry
Havelock (1795-1857, in Stewart's House) ; and Lord
Alverstone (in Saunderites) were all non-foundation boys.
The number of Oppidans before the early years of the
nineteenth century was apparently never large. There
is no reason to believe that the total numbers of the school
ever exceeded a hundred much before that time, a fact
that makes the list of distinguished Carthusians the more
remarkable. It seems likely that many of the non-
Foundation boys either boarded outside or were day-boys,
for we find no trace of anything like a boarding-house
in the earlier days of the School. An elevation map of
the place by Sutton Nichols, of about the year 1750, shows
that the usher lived in rooms above the house called
" Gownboys." and certainly could have housed no boarders
there ; while the schoolmaster lived in a detached house
to the west of the scholars' house which, if the scale is at
all to be trusted, could have had little accommodation
in it for boarders at that day. And, indeed, by an appeal
to the Governors, made on June 6, 1773 by Dr. Samuel
Berdmore, the headmaster, we learn that, since his appoint-
NUMBERS OF THE EARLY SCHOOL 255
ment in 1769, he had at his own expense provided more
room, but that the house only accommodated, and that
with great difficulty and inconvenience, twenty-three
boarders. He speaks of the straits he was put to if he
had sickness in his own family, and suggests the raising
of the roof of a building (we cannot identify this) in Chapel-
Cloister, and the raising also of the roof of the building
over the washhouse (this hardly can refer to Washhouse
Court). He was granted the sum of £160 in answer to
his appeal. Here we get at a means of estimating roughly
the size of the School in 1769. There were forty Gownboys
and twenty-three boarders in the Headmaster's House.
At that time we do not know of any other house which
took boarders. The number of day-boys is guesswork.
But with the staff of a headmaster, an usher, an assistant
usher, and a writing-master (the latter non-resident and
intermittent), we cannot suppose the day-boys to have
been very numerous. The total numbers must have been
considerably under a hundred. They had, we imagine,
risen in 1795, since in that year the Governors ordered
that an annual return of the boarders in all the boarding-
houses should be made. And the phrase implies an in-
crease of boarding-houses, and therefore of boys. In 1805,
at the end of the lease of the Physician, Dr. Shackleford,
the Headmaster, Dr. Raine, was allowed to move out
to his house, No. 29, Charterhouse Square. We know
from Horwood's map of 1799 the very numbering of the
houses in the Square, and we find that 29 was at the
south-west corner at the entrance to Charterhouse Street
(now Haynes Street), a singularly unsuitable position
for a schoolhouse, one would have thought. Perhaps
the Governors thought so too, since in 1807, at the death
of Dr. Hulme, they transferred the Headmaster to his
house in the Square. Dr. Raine died in 1811, and in the
days of his successor, Dr. Russell, began the great increase
in numbers of which I shall have to speak more in detail
presently.
The Governors' transactions, which give us so scanty
a knowledge of the housing of the boarders, are entirely
256 THE SCHOOL
silent as to any matters concerned with their diet, main-
tenance, and manner of life. But it is reasonable to suppose
that they would have been on the same scale as that of
Gownboys. And for this we have some evidence at intervals.
In the seventeenth century, and in a less degree in the
eighteenth, the standard of comfort represents a Spartan
simplicity, though perhaps not out of proportion to that
which prevailed throughout Society, and in all public schools
of the day. A Gownboy rose at 5 a.m., he had his breakfast
at 8 a.m. — beer, bread, and cheese. His dinner seems to
have been at one period 3 p.m., but afterwards at midday,
with a supper of bread and cheese and beer at night. It
is to the long intervals between meals that one may attri-
bute the system of " Beverage," as it is called in the index
of the Governors' minutes, whereby any boy could apply
between dinner and supper at the butlery for a " hunk "
of bread — called a bevor.* Tea and coffee in that day were
luxuries unknown to Gownboys. John Wesley, whose
schooldays lay between 1713 and 1720, tells us that at
school he had little except bread, and not always enough
of that. But the formal records of the account books give
us rather a more liberal diet than that. It is, however,
probable that John Wesley's picture of school life gives a
generally correct impression of the hard fare of the day. I
have already recorded that Gownboys had to sleep two in a
bed till the year 1805, when, under Dr. Raine, who intro-
duced many useful changes, they were given a bed apiece.
By the aid of an extract from the Governors' order book,
the reader will be able to suggest to his mind both what
a Gownboy ate and drank and how he was clothed.
THE WEEKLY CHABDGES OF THE SCROLLERS DYETT.
Every sixe Schollers to have att breakfast, in beere lu
and in bread ld which cometh by the weeke to xiiijrt
Also sixe Schollers are to have the like proportion
of bread and beere for their beavo8 in the after-
noone xiiij'1
* This word was still in use in Suffolk in 1864 — perhaps is so
still — amongst labourers for the ten or eleven o'clock snack in the
harvest-field.
GOWNBOY DIET AND OUTFIT 257
Bread and beere for sixe Schollers xiiii meales att
ld the peece every meale cometh by the weeke to vii"
Beefe to vi Schollers for v'1 meales iiijs ijd
Mutton Veale or Porke to vi Schollers for v(I meales vs xtl
Frydaie Dynner vi Schollers to have in Furmaty
iiiid in butter iiiid and in Fishe or Appelepyes
iiiid in all xii(l
Satterday att Dynner the like xiid
Satterday Supper Furmaty iiii<l and butter iiid in all viid
DECREMENTS TO THE SCHOLLERS DYETT.
White and bay salte vitl ob. by the weeke and for
the whole year cometh to xxviijs iid
Oatmeale for all the Schollers viij'1 by the weekes
and for the whole year xxxiiij3 viiid
Candles xviii"1 a week for xxiiij weeks att iiii'1 the
pound vii11 iiiis
APPARELL AND OTHER NECCIES FOR THE SCHOLLERS.
For a gowne vizc ii yardes di of broadcloth att ixs vid
the yarde xxiii* ixd bayes to lyne ytt iiiier yardes att
iis iiiid the yard ixs iiiid one yard of russett Jane fustian
for the back and pocketts ixd and for makinge the same
gowne iis iiiid. In all xxxvi8 iid.
For a Somer suite viz4 vii yardes di of Fustian for the
outside and to lyne the Skirts att iis iid the yard xvis iii'1
two yards of white Jane to lyne the Dublett att ixd the
yard xviiid buttons and silke xiid straite canvas stiffeninge
and Cotton for the sleeves xxiid lyninge and pocketts for
the hose ii8 id ii yardes of bayes for the hoase att xv(1 the
yard iis vid and for makinge the Dublett and hoase iiii3
iiiid. In all xxixs vid.
For a winter suite viz* ii yardes di and di q"ter of
Fustian for the outside of the Dublett and to lyne the
Skirtes att xix'1 the yard iiii8 id ob. ii yardes of white Jane
Fustian to lyne the Dublett att ix(1 the yard xviiid. Buttons
and silke vii'1 straite Canvas xiiii'1 oyled Skinnes for lyinges
and pocketts iis id making the Dublett and hoase
iiiis iiii11 for buttons and silke to the Jerkin viid and for
makinge the Jerkin xxd. In all xviis x'1 ob.
258 THE SCHOOL
Necessaryes to be yearely made and provided by the
Schollers Taylor for every Scholler viz. five paire of Shooes
att xxd the pfe viii. iiiid iiiier pfe of Stockinges att xxd the
pre vis viii'1 a hatt and band iiii* garters girdles pointes
and gloves xvid. In all xxs iiii'1.
Other Necessaryes to bee provided bye the Steward and
Schoolemaster viz1 for every Scholler three Shirtes in a
yeare att iii3 the peece ixs. Eighte bandes to every one
viii* and for Bookes paper Inck quilles and teachinge them
to write and singe xis i". In all xxviii* i(l.
MEMORAND. UPON THE FESTIVALL DAYES ENSEUINGE VIZT
Xpmas day6, St Steven's daye, St. John's daye, Inno-
cents daye, Neweyeare's day, Twelveth daye, Candlemas
daye, Shrovesonday, Shrovetuesday, the Kinge's day,
our Lady daye, Easter day, Easter Monday, Easter
Tuesdaie, Midsomer daye, Michaelmas daye, All Ste daye
and the vth of November The Urs table & every Messe
of poore men Officers & Schollers shall exceed and bee
allowed above the ordinary allowance as followeth
viz1. The Urs Table att dynner ii8 v'1 his attendants xiid.
The Urs Table at Supper xii(l and his attendants vid.
The pore men att Dynner xii11 and att Supper vi(1. And
the Schollers att Dynner viii'1 and att Supper vid.
The dress of a Gownboy, here indicated, underwent
little important change for full two centuries. He wore
a straight-cut " jerkin " or short jacket of black cloth,
which could be buttoned up in front in cold weather,
while its large collar (over which a white Eton collar
was worn by under school) could also be turned up for
effective protection. He wore a hat, but we have no
record of the pattern of this, since it was abolished in 1805
in favour of caps, while trenchers for upper school were
introduced at a later period. Knee breeches were
worn, and these still prevailed in Russell's day — as,
indeed, they did in outside society * — for Thackeray's
drawing in his own set of illustrations to the Newcomes
* A caricature by Thackeray in Charterhouse Museum shows
Dr. Russell teaching Euclid in knee-breeches.
THE EARLY HEADMASTERS 259
shows this. I do not know at what exact date the knee-
breeches were commuted to the less seemly trowser. The
cloth gown * was of a very peculiar but picturesque
cut, the sleeve, below the armhole, being prolonged into a
long slender point, bound round at the end with strong
thread. Low shoes completed the dress. Taking any
period between 1614 and 1814, it is probable that Richard
Crashaw, a Gownboy of the first year of the Foundation,
differed little in appearance from Richard Steele (1684-89),
John Wesley (1713-20), or Lord Ellenborough (1761-67),
nor any one of these in a great degree, except below the
knee, from the last Gownboy who wore the costume in
1872.
The internal history of a Public School is not often of
a kind to produce many incidents of permanent interest.
I can select but a few which may be worth recording.
Our first Headmaster, Dr. Nicholas Gray, held office but
for ten years, and retired to the Charterhouse living
of Castle Camps on his marriage, which disqualified him
for further service as Headmaster. Thence, taking again
to schoolmastering, he became Headmaster of Merchant
Taylors' School and later of Eton. The third on the list,
Dr. William Middleton, in like manner reigned but two
years, and retired to the living of Cold Norton. We find
him promised the rich Charterhouse living of Balsham f
in Cambridgeshire when it should fall vacant. But before
a vacancy occurred times had changed. We find in 1641,
when the complexion of the Assembly of Governors had
become Parliamentarian, that certain questions had been
administered to him and several times repeated. And
on his utterly ignoring them the Governors take it as a
wilful insult and cancel their promise in the same year
that saw the expulsion of his successor, Robert Brooke,
from the headmastershipon account of his Royalist opinions,
to which a tradition — which I am not able to trace —
* A gown is preserved in Charterhouse Museum.
t Balsham was then worth about £1000 a year.
260 THE SCHOOL
adds the picturesque detail that he was in the habit of
flogging any boy who didn't agree with him. His two
pupils, Crashaw and Lovelace, apparently did agree.
At the end of that century we naturally stop at the name
of Dr. Thomas Walker,* who was Headmaster for no
less than thirty-nine years, from 1679-1728. In his period
come the names of Addison, Steele, and Wesley. His
successor was Andrew Tooke (1728-1731), author of the
Pantheon, a familiar school book in its day. In the middle
of that century occurred an episode which throws light,
perhaps, on the discipline of the School in that day, for
it is hardly quite an isolated incident, though certainly
by far the most striking. Under James Hotchkis, as Head-
master, Gownboys broke into a rebellion, headed by John
Roberts, captain of the School, and his fellow Gownboy
monitors. The matron's maid had offended them — we
know not how. They proceeded to pour water over the
maid and, going all in a body, — save seven Gownboys,
who are mentioned by name — they broke the matron's
windows, demanding the expulsion of the maid, and
then ran " hollowing " on to Green, refusing to re-enter
the House. The Master was summoned, and cut off all
food supplies — and, though a few returned to food and
duty, the great mass had to be sent home. They nearly
all came back on Monday. Roberts was expelled. The
monitors were degraded and all " received the correction
of the School." So ended a mutiny which, strange to say,
was repeated on Dec. 12, 1808, with very similar results.
As an illustration of the strained relations which might
occur at times between the Master and the Schoolmaster
under the somewhat difficult conditions, one may quote
a very remarkable episode recorded in the year 1749.
Dr. Nicholas Mann, the Master, suddenly inflicted a fine
on the Headmaster, Dr. Eberhard Crusius, for defect in
his duties. The latter, naturally resenting this, appealed
to the Governors, whose position was not to be envied.
They escaped from their dilemma on a technical issue,
* His gravestone is in the pavement of the Chapel a few paces
distant from the Founder's Tomb.
ENTRANCE TO CHAPEL.
NICOLAUS MANN OLIM MAGISTER 261
namely, that since the needed notice had not been given,
the mulct could not be confirmed, but they added the rider
that it was by no means evident that the condition of the
School was due to the present Headmaster (who had suc-
ceeded Hotchkis). And indeed the subsequent career
of Crusius — who was amongst our most efficient Head-
masters, and who afterwards received the thanks of the
Governors and an increase of salary — is not in favour of
the Master's * view on that occasion.
The number of cases, however, during the century,
in which Gownboys are reported to the Governors as having
absented themselves for some days, or having gone out
of bounds, seems to show that the very small staff had to
deal with great difficulties and with conditions that made
good discipline hard to maintain. And meanwhile
London had been steadily creeping up to Charterhouse.
The space between the city walls and ours, which in the
days of the monastery had been sheer open field, and in
the days of Sutton had been dotted along the line of Alders-
gate Street with a few great houses, and elsewhere with
blocks and incipient streets of tenements, was now fairly
covering itself with buildings, while Goswell Street now
prolonged itself past our east wall into Clerkenwell. The
change was steadily advancing which, seventy years later,
was to drive us from our old home to fresh woods and
pastures new. But, before that day came, Charterhouse
was to pass through the most notable period of its existence.
* The tablet in memory of this Master, Nicolaus Mann olim
magisternuncremistiispulverc, is over the entrance door of the Chapel.
The grave slab of Dr. Crusius lies a few yards away.
CHAPTER XXIII
RAINE— RUSSELL — THE MADRAS OR BELL SYSTEM,
1791-1872
THE last decade of the eighteenth century, and the first
of the nineteenth, saw the School under the rule of one of
its strongest Headmasters, Matthew Raine, who entered
office in 1791. He was at once a great scholar and a
capable administrator, and at the end of his twenty years
of office a great advance had been made in the equipment
of the School, both as to teaching and housing.
In the third year of his tenure, namely in 1794, we find
the first mention of a boarding-house, which was afterwards
destined to have a permanent name amongst Carthusians.
By the ratebook * of the Square we find in that year that
the Rev. James Stewart (also spelt Steward) paid rates
for Rutland Court, and in the following year Dr. Raine
did so, and from that time forward the house seems to have
been used as a schoolhouse, though with great alterations
and additions, passing through the hands of Chapman,
Penny, Oliver Walford (in whose day it obtained the name
of " Verites "), Elwyn, and Poynder, down to the date
of the removal in 1872. Rutland House, it will be remem-
bered, was the great house built by Lord North at the
north-east corner of Charterhouse Square, adjoining the
playground (once Great Cloister), who destined it for
the home of Lady North when he should have ceased to
be the owner of the mansion in Charterhouse. It had
been sold to the Dukes of Rutland, under whom it obtained
* The name of Mrs. Anne Fisher occurs in the ratebook, but she
was probably a " Dame " taking boarders for the School under
Dr. Raine
262
BIG SCHOOL, GOWNBOY WRITING SCHOOL 263
the name of Rutland House, and passed thence into the
hands of the Governors of Charterhouse, by whom, in 1872,
it was sold to Merchant Taylors' Company.
In 1802 occurred another change which tells of enlarged
ideas as to the needs of the School. In that year the
Governors decided to build a large schoolroom (which came
to be known as Big School) on the raised ground known as
" Hill," probably caused, in the first instance, by the debris
of the seven north cells of the Great Cloister. This building,
with a classroom presently added at each end, and a large
room known as " New School," which had become, in the
writer's day, Fifth Form and Under Fifth room, and
French room, was destroyed in 1872, and some of the stone
courses and windows with names carved upon them are
now set up in the cloisters at Godalming. Up to the year
1802 there had been no separate schoolroom, but the teach-
ing had been done in Gownboy Writing Schoolroom
(which would, in other houses, have been called Under
Long Room), and apparently also in a room above, since
the Governors now order the latter to be turned into a
dormitory. Writing School, as it existed in 1802, was
a very fine room. I have in an earlier chapter spoken of
the magnificent ceiling with the coats of arms of the
first Governors, wrought by the King's plasterer in the
reign of James I. Huge square columns of oak (painted
brown) supported this ceiling, while the walls were lined
with the lockers and desks. The room had served for the
teaching of every great Carthusian from 1614, and, strange
to say, it was, in spite of the addition of " Big School,"
still to be used again as a classroom for the Sixth Form
in the great pressure in Russell's days.
Other improvements in Gownboys are recorded in the
orders of the Governors during Raine's Headmastership.*
One incident of his day has already been touched upon. On
* A portrait of Dr. Baine, by Sir Thomas Lawrence, hangs on
the landing of the Master's Lodge. The original chalk sketch for
the head, by Lawrence, is at Godalming. Dr. Raine's monument,
subscribed for by Carthusians, by Flaxman, is on the south wall
of the Chapel, and the letters M.R on the pavement below mark his
resting-place.
264 THE MADRAS OR BELL SYSTEM
Founder's Day, in 1808, Gownboys broke into open rebellion.
The cause of this was the issue of an order forbidding Gown-
boys to entertain guests in Hall on Founder's Day, which
practice had proved a source of disorder. Gownboys pro-
ceeded to break the windows of the matron, the Headmaster,
and the Master, and when the latter appeared to overawe
the mutineers, they received him with brickbats and other
contumelious missiles. The upshot was, nevertheless,
in favour of the officers mentioned, since, after the expulsion
of the ringleader, with other proportionate punishment
to his chief supporters, and " the correction of the School "
all round, Gownboys accepted the inevitable and law and
order reigned once more. At the death of Dr. Raine,
Dr. John Russell, who had been second master for some
years, succeeded. It is noticeable that the Governors, before
electing him, had to abolish the regulation which forbade
them to elect a Headmaster under the age of twenty-seven.
Russell had not reached that age.
John Russell was a man of exceptional vigour and
capacity, a born reformer, and possessed of imagination
and of original ideas. Perhaps he may have lacked some-
what that intimate knowledge of the human boy, without
which all other knowledge is as naught in value for a
Headmaster. His endeavour to meet the needs and the
loud call of that age for cheap education is an object-lesson
for all time. It was obvious then, as now, that a great
school, officered by men of first-rate capacity and in due
proportion to the numbers of the school, must always
be expensive. The problem of securing men of the best
quality in proper quantity, who are ready to make school-
mastering their profession, can be solved only by paying
them. Russell endeavoured to meet that difficulty,
which stood in the way of a cheap education, by resorting
to a system which was then much talked of, and was
known as the Madras System or the Bell System.* This
was nothing more or less than a glorified system of pupil
teaching. As the numbers of the School went up the
* So far as I know, he was the first and only Headmaster of any
important school who put the system to its proof.
DR. RUSSELL 265
number of masters almost stood still. Thus, in 1818, for 238
boys there were 5 masters or 1 to every 47. In 1821, for
431 boys there were still 5 masters or 1 to every 86. But
the place of masters was supplied by " prsepositi," the
picked boy of each form being set to teach the rest of his form,
and keep order as best he could. I have heard Thackeray,
at a Founder's Day dinner, tell the story — which was also
told by Dean Saunders — how once Russell entered a class-
room where chaos appeared to be ruling, and there being no
sign of a " praepositus," — " Where is your praepositus ? "
cried Russell. " Please, sir, here he is," and they fished
out, from under the desk, the very small boy who had
been set to rule over them. They had placed him there
to be out of the way.
Yet, for a season, the system had an extraordinary
success. The School * ran up in numbers till, in 1825, it
reached 480, after which it ran down with mournful
rapidity, and by 1830 the writing on the wall was plain
for all to read. It had been tried in the balance and found
wanting.
Yet it has been said that the Madras System might have
had a longer, even a permanent, life if all the masters had
been men of the stupendous energy and force of John
Russell, f Even as it was it had a very real success with the
boy of marked ability — though it is, perhaps, but one more
example of the fact that such a boy will always learn under
any system. But for the average boy, and especially
for the boy below the average, it proved, as it was bound
to prove, a complete failure. And the British parent,
* Interesting testimony to the esteem in which the School was
held is found in a letter from the Duke of Wellington of March 18,
1820, to his friend, Lady Frances Shelley: " I am astonished that
you do not send your second son to the Charterhouse, which I believe
is the best school of them all. . . . Ever yours most sincerely, Welling-
ton." Lady Shelley replies : " I perfectly agree that the Charterhouse
is the best school of all. He is to be a sailor," etc. She had consulted
Russell, who advised her against sending the boy, who must leave
at 12 or 13. Wellington became a Governor in 1827.
t Russell did not take boarders in his own House, or even, for
some time, live inside Charterhouse. He had such faith in the
automatic force of his system that he lived at Blackheath, riding
thither after school hours on a very good-looking black cob, as I
have been told by old Carthusians of his day.
266 THE MADRAS OR BELL SYSTEM
not always a far-seeing judge in matters of education, had
got what he had asked for — a cheap education — and
presently discovered the value of the article. It took
him, however, some fourteen years to do so.
Naturally, as the School in the early days of " the
System " ran up in numbers, Russell found himself in
danger of being choked by his own success. He had much
ado to find house room for them. There was no house
within the walls at this time, except Gownboys, which
took boarders. In Raine's day, as we have seen, Rutland
Court, entered from Charterhouse Square, but overlooking
the playground, had been brought into use, and also
" No. 15," Charterhouse Square, the house adjoining the
Master's Lodge, which had been, during the greater part of
Raine's period, occupied by the Rev. James Steward * till
the year 1811. Now, in Russell's day, No. 15 was in the
hands of the second master, the Rev. Robert Watkinson
(familiarly known, as I have been told by John Murray and
other Carthusians, as " Watky "). It was a notable house,
this. For, besides the great Carthusians of Steward's day,
it held in the year 1821 Thomas Lovell Beddoes the poet,
and John Murray, the third of the great publishing house
(b. 1808), who, it is interesting to note from the Blue Book,
was presently " prsepositus " of the Form which held
Dean Liddell and Thackeray. Next door to No. 15,
namely in Nos. 14 and 13, united into one house, the Rev.
William Henry Chapman — afterwards Reader, and then
Rector of Balsham — took boarders. In the year 1821 we
find that Watkinson had 148 boys in his house and Chapman
144. And he who knows the size of these two houses may
well stand aghast at the knowledge. For we have sufficient
means of judging of their capacities. Chapman's house,
Nos. 13, 14, f still exists to tell its own tale, but Watkinson's
* In this house Sir Henry Havelock was a boarder under Steward
at the same time as Archdeacon William Hale Hale, afterwards
Master of Charterhouse. I state this on the authority of Miss
Caroline Hale, daughter of the Archdeacon, still living in 1914.
It is evident that George Grote, the historian, was in Steward's
house at the same time.
t These two houses are now the Fife Hotel (1914), and, in external
appearance, very little altered since Russell's day, as may be seen
SCHOOL HOUSES, 1820-30 267
was pulled down in 1838-42 to make room for the
present sleeping quarters of the Master's Lodge.
The exact frontage of Watkinson's was 75 ft. 7 ins.,
and its depth about 40 ft., and it had three not lofty
storeys. It will thus be seen that it stood over an area of
perhaps one of the block houses at modern Charterhouse,
built to receive between fifty and sixty boys, while its
cubic contents were scarcely more than half. And into
that space were crammed 148 boys, besides the House
Master's family and staff of servants, and into the next
house, Chapman's, as we have seen, 144. A letter in my
possession describes the appalling overcrowding, and tells
of the condition of things in one of these houses when an
epidemic of scarlet fever broke out. The patients were
crammed into an upper room which had direct communi-
cation with the box room. So they lay, and so they
recovered.
But in the year which we have quoted the Governors
appointed a small committee, headed by the Bishop of
London, to report on the overcrowding, and as a result the
order was made that in future the numbers of the two
houses should be reduced to 100 each — still at least four
times what they were fitted to carry according to the
standard of to-day. This reduction led to the opening of
three new boarding-houses, one for fifty-six by the Rev.
Francis Lloyd at No. 18, Charterhouse Square — its size on
the map shows how inadequate it was for such a number —
while two new houses were opened in Wilderness f Row,
from a schoolboy drawing of the period,,which shows that the balcony
of to-day is that which existed in 1816. John Leech was in this House.
* Any knowledge of the surroundings of Russell's time, which
ended twenty years exactly before my own school days began in
1856, is derived from letters, in my possession, written to me some
thirty years ago by Dean Liddell, John H. Roupell, P. R. Hunt,
Colonel Josiah Wilkinson, the Rev. W. Phillott, and others. Also
from what I gleaned from Carthusians of that date, who in my day
revisited Charterhouse, and even from what fell from the lips of Dean
Saunders, Thackeray, John Murray, and Miss Leech, sister of John
Leech.
t It is needless to remind the reader that Wilderness Row
retained the memory of the Monks' Wilderness. Unhappily the
name has, in the last twenty years, been changed to that of Clerken-
well Road, and one more landmark has vanished from London,
with no very apparent gain to anybody.
268 THE MADRAS OR BELL SYSTEM
Nos. 27, 28, one on either side of Berwick Street at the
junction with the Row. These were each to hold fifty-six,
and they both remain to this day. The house to the west
of Berwick Street was held by the Rev. Edward Churton
(Archdeacon Churton, the well-known Spanish scholar),
while that on the east was opened by the Rev. Edmund
Henry Penny. And, since Wilderness Row was neither
then nor now exactly ideal for boys to roam in, a bifurcated
tunnel (which still exists) under the Row gave access from
the playground (Under Green) to these Houses. In the
very first year of Penny's House, William Makepeace
Thackeray was a boarder in it. And here occurred Thacke-
ray's fight with George Stovin Venables, which for ever
after gave to the great novelist's nose its resemblance to
that of Michelangelo. I have in my possession a letter
from J. H. Roupell, a monitor in the House, who gave
leave for the fight but was too busy with Greek Iambics to
preside himself on the occasion. Thackeray remained in
that House for two years and then removed to the House
No. 7, Charterhouse Square, where Mrs. Boyes took in a
few boys who were marked under letter G as day boys in
the Blue Book. In 1823 yet another boarding house was
opened by the Rev. Andrew Irvine at 40, 41, Charterhouse
Square, in the house — whether rebuilt or not I cannot say —
once occupied by Lord Howard of Effingham, and earlier
still by the Duchess of Dorset.
If the crowding in the houses was excessive, the accom-
modation in the playground was to match. Up to the
year 1821 the School had only the space so often mentioned
which represented the square of the Great Cloister of the
Monastery. This space, known as " Green," is about
330 feet square, and from a report made by Dr. Russell
in 1819 it was uneven, full of holes, and quite unfit for the
playing of games. Of organised games, as we know them
now, there had so far been none, though it must be re-
membered that in that respect Charterhouse was not very
unlike most other schools. Cricket had not anywhere
taken the place which it now holds, but at Charterhouse at
least it must have been still in a prehistoric stage. Such a
CRICKET, FOOTBALL, HOOPS 269
thing as a match must have been almost impossible.
Football had not anywhere developed into its final shapes,
though the game at Rugby was well on its way. It was
still in its condition as a mere " runabout " elsewhere.
Probably at Charterhouse the Cloister game was beginning
to take shape, but its history is buried in obscurity. There
were in the south-east corner of " Green " next to Rutland
House (afterwards called, as we have said, " Verites ") two
courts for bat-fives, but as these were paid for by private
enterprise they are not recorded in the Governors' minutes
and I cannot give their date, but I believe them to have
been later than Russell's day. In 1821 the only game
that I am able to trace in a set form was the somewhat
unusual one of hoop-racing, which, as it has been described
to me by those who knew it, was a better game than our
modern pride might lead us to esteem it. To drive four
big hoops at once round a square space of nearly a quarter
of a mile,* with sharp angles to it — for that is what Colonel
Wilkinson described to me — must certainly have needed
no small skill and have had some fine exercise about it. It
was for this form of racing that Lord Ellenborough,
according to tradition, painted up on the old east wall of
monastery date the word " Crown," with a presentment
of a crown above it to act as a winning post. This name
survives at Godalming, having been transferred to the
Shop at the Pavilion. The bay of cloisters (west side)
known as Middle Briers — no one has ever found a satis-
factory derivation for this name — was known as " The
Bell," in the said races, but this name has not been trans-
ferred to any site at Godalming. I may mention that
Thackeray protested indignantly against the suggestion
that the School played marbles in his day.
From what has been said it will be clear that the
provision for games was miserably inadequate for over
400 boys, and in 1821 — after waiting two years for it —
Russell obtained the assent of the Governors to his levelling
and improving " Green," and at the same time the wall
* John Wesley tells us in his diary that he used to keep himself
fit by running round " Green " thrice every morning before breakfast.
T
270 THE MADRAS OR BELL SYSTEM
just north of " Hill," which separated the site of the old
Great Cloister (" Green ") from the Monks' Wilderness
garden was thrown down and two and a half acres from
the latter were added to the playground. The two Greens
thus became " Upper Green " and " Under Green." At
about the same time Russell, at his own expense, had to
raise the wall round " Under Green " which separated it
from Goswell Street and Wilderness Row, since bold
spirits were wont to overleap the previous inadequate
boundary and to " tib out " as it was called. And this
brings us to the question of discipline
No one will need to be told that with at most seven
resident masters to 400-480 boys it was impossible to
use effective control. Boys could be away for a day
or two without being found out, especially if they were
day boys. You took your holiday and on your return
you took your chance. Colonel Wilkinson told me how
he and John Leech (at that time a day boy) " tibbed out "
once for a day's fishing on the Lea, and how, luck not
favouring them that time, on their return they caught
something which is not mentioned in any book on " British
Fishes." In the great chaos of big forms it must have
been not a difficult thing to escape notice. And whatever
hopes Russell could have had of working his system to a
success so far as teaching went, it is difficult to understand
how he could have hoped for it in the matter of discipline.
Dean Liddell, in a very interesting letter to me, de-
scribes the state of things in Russell's own classroom,
which was still Gownboy Writing School when he and
Thackeray were together in the Second Form " Emeriti."
Russell, by the way, had made the fatal mistake of changing
the names of the forms, so that, the head form was no
longer the Sixth but the " Senior " or " First Form,"
the rest ranging down to the Twelfth Form, the rear being
brought up by two forms of Petties.* In fact, Russell
forgot the knowledge so important to any reformer, and
especially a Public School reformer, that you may change
* The present writer began school life in 1856 in the Under
Petties. There was no lower for him to start in.
VlTH FORM IN RUSSELL'S DAY 271
anything you like with safety so long as you do not change
the names. The school would have none of the new
names, and kept religiously to their Sixth Form, just as
they resented the substitution of fines for corporal punish-
ment. Dean LiddelPs friend, Dean Stanley, used to
chuckle over Russell's failure here. " Russell was a very
great headmaster who could do almost anything," he
used to say, " except to overcome the conservatism of
boys."
Russell had a colossal Sixth (" First Form "). In 1826,
the year which Liddell describes, there were fifty-five in it.
And Russell had inserted a sort of Under Sixth (Second
Form) of fifty-four more boys. These he called the
" Emeriti," and they were privileged to sit in the same
classroom (Writing School) as the Sixth Form and catch, if
they could, any passing scraps of the teaching and of the
construing, for they were, says Liddell, themselves hardly
ever " set on," and if they were the consequences were
disastrous, since they naturally never prepared a lesson.
Thackeray, says Liddell, sat next to him in this remarkable
form, and the Blue Book of 1826 bears out the statement.
Thackeray spent nearly all his time in drawing, but he also
brought in a volume of Byron and a novel to fall back
upon. In later years, says Liddell, when Thackeray, the
Dean himself, and Mrs. Liddell were riding in the Park,
Thackeray turned to Mrs. Liddell and accused the Dean
of having ruined his prospects in life by always doing his
Verses for him and so depriving him of all opportunity of
self-improvement. Certainly the opportunities of such
vicarious self-improvement as Liddell had — though he
denied it, saying he had much ado to get through his own
— must have been ample in that day. Another Carthusian
tells me that Russell spoke with a peculiarly distinct and
syllabic utterance, and made a great point of it that every
one in his form should do the same. Considering the size
of the form he must surely have sent forth a great brood of
articulate-speaking men. The schoolmaster of to-day, as
he realises the picture of Russell's classroom, can only
humbly ask himself how anything got taught or learnt in
272 THE MADRAS OR BELL SYSTEM
that vast assembly in the Doctor's classroom. Yet the
names of the men who went out from Charterhouse in that
day show us that it did.
But, as I have already said, the end came and came
rapidly, not through the failure of the scholarly stratum of
the school, but through the unfitness of the system to
handle the average boy. In 1832 the numbers had
dwindled to one hundred and thirty-seven with four
masters. When John Russell went out from Charterhouse
— there is something very pathetic in the farewell of the
strong man — the school said good-bye to a great though
mistaken Headmaster whose career had indeed made
history for it.
CHAPTER XXIV
SAUNDERS— ELDER— ELWYN—HAIG BROWN
WHEN Augustus Page Saunders, a man of strong will and
a fine teacher, took up the reins in 1832, he was yet for
some years to suffer from the downward impetus which
was still upon the school. It reached low- water mark in
1835, when the Blue Book records ninety-nine. All the
boarding houses in the square now ceased to exist, and the
school shrank within the limits of Gownboys, Penny's
house (Rutland Court, presently to be Verites — Penny had
come to it from Wilderness Row in 1827), and presently
" Saunderites." And except that the Reader took a very
few boarders into his house, who were supposed to need
special care, there were never again any other boarding-
houses. In 1838-42, indeed, No. 15, Charterhouse Square,
where great Carthusians had spent their schooldays, was
pulled down to make room for the present sleeping wing of
Master's Lodge, and at the same time the headmaster's
house, at the north end of the terrace, was altered to ac-
commodate boarders. Gownboy " Writing School " was
divided in half by a wooden wall, and the northern half
adjoining the headmaster's house was thrown into the
newly-formed house.* It is greatly to be regretted that
the Governors, who were at the time at heavy expense for
the new buildings of the Brothers, felt themselves bound to
resort to this economy rather than provide a long room
* The dates, therefore, of the three houses which gave their
names to the three " blockhouses " at Godalming are as follows : —
Gownboys . . . . 1614
Verites .. .. 1794
Saunderites . . . . 1836
273
274 SAUNDERS— ELDER- ELWYN-HAIG BROWN
elsewhere for Saunderites. The plan involved the injury
of a most stately room, whose final destruction at a later
date is ever to be regretted.
From the date of its lowest numbers the school gradually
recovered and in the forties once reached one hundred and
seventy-eight. It must be remembered that the school
was now fighting against odds which no headmaster,
however capable, could withstand. The growth of London
was going forward with leaps and bounds. The unwilling-
ness of parents to send their sons from the country to a
boarding school in London, which, once country, was fast
becoming a space enclosed by streets and factories, was
now making itself felt. The days of Charterhouse as a
London school were, in the 'fifties, already numbered,
though few could then have been found to realise it. In
1853 when Dr. Saunders retired and became Dean of
Peterborough, he left one hundred and seventy-eight boys
in the school. He had been a teacher of the first order —
he produced two Balliol Scholars, Palmer and Walford, in
one year — and a strong, at times even trenchant, dis-
ciplinarian. Carthusians of his day were full of good
stories of his doings and sayings, marked all by a certain
quaint humour which was among the valuable assets of his
personality — witness, for example, his offer to two boys
who were anxious to fight, that though he could not oblige
them in that respect, he would flog each of them as long as
the other desired, and it would come to the same in the
end. Carthusians who had been in his Sixth were fond of
telling how in his later days he would seem to be asleep,
the form keeping up a drowsy humming for fear of arousing
him, till he would suddenly wake up, pounce on some boy,
set him on to construe, and in ten minutes teach more than
many a man could do in a day. He left his mark on the
school, and it was indeed fitting that a great school-house
should keep his name alive.
The reign of his successor, Edward Elder, from 1853 to
1858 has a tinge of sadness in it. A man of the greatest
intellect, a strenuous and able teacher, he added to his
gifts a mastery of many branches of general cultivation
ELDER ELWYN HAIG BROWN 275
and was a man of wide interests. But he made, as I have
been told by one who knew him well, his great powers pay
too heavy a tax to nature. He would, after a strenuous
day's work in school, go out, for example, to some new
play, if it interested him, returning afterwards to work
into the small hours of the morning. The strain was too
great, the penalty had to be paid and the last two years of
his life were shadowed by a great sadness. The work of
the school fell mainly on his second in command, Richard
Elwyn, who on Elder's death became headmaster. Most
inspiring of teachers and most lovable of men, he entered
on his task after a long and anxious strain which had fallen
on him during the last period of his predecessor's rule, and
he never, so I have heard him say, entirely recovered from
it during his work at Charterhouse. He was not a man to
spare himself at any time, and at the end of five years,
during which he had such men as Henry Nettleship, Sir
Richard Claverhouse Jebb, Edward Wharton, and Richard
Webster (Lord Alverstone) for his pupils, he resigned his
post under the threats of a nervous breakdown. Few men
have had, in greater degree and better deserved, the love
of those whom he taught.*
When, in the late winter months of 1863, the Governors
chose William Haig Brown out of a large field of com-
petitors, they made a great choice. He had not long held
office before it became clear that Charterhouse had got
one of the strong type of headmasters. Nor was he long
himself in grasping the situation of the school, which was
briefly this. It was now so surrounded by a dense net-
work of warehouses, factories, and streets as to offer no
possibility of expansion. Even if by some miracle — it
would have been little less — the numbers could have been
once more raised so as to bear comparison with those of
other great schools, no schoolhouses with which to meet
the increase could have been provided within the walls,
and still less could extra playground on a scale to meet the
* A rest and change entirely restored him. He resumed the
congenial work of teaching as Headmaster at St. Peter's, York,
and afterwards became Master of Charterhouse.
276 SAUNDERS— ELDER— ELWYN— HAIG BROWN
increased requirements of the day have by any means been
provided. If Charterhouse was to hold its own with other
Public Schools there was but one way — removal to a
country site. The question had been already at times in
the air. The reader will find it gravely discussed in
Papers from Greyfriars, the school Journal, about 1859.
But no serious movement was made till 1864, when the
Public School Commission reported strongly in favour of
the change, which had, during the inquiry, been urged
upon them by no less a witness, amongst others, than Dean
Saunders. In July of that year the Master and school-
master were ordered to make a report on the recom-
mendation of the Committee, and this report was referred
in November to a committee consisting of Earls Dalhousie,
Romney, and Harrowby, the Bishop of London, and Lord
Justice Turner, who, on March 15, 1865, returned their
report to the Assembly with twelve recommendations.
For our present purpose we extract merely clause 8
which refers to the removal of the school —
"8. That the Removal of the School into the country
is unnecessary and also inexpedient inasmuch as it would
entail the maintenance of two establishments, an expendi-
ture which the funds of the Hospital could not meet.
And that the idea that such a change is in consonance
with the views and opinions of old Carthusians is an
error."
It is hard, as one reads this record in the Governors'
order book, to persuade oneself that this really took place
within two years and two months of the final achievement.
It is just this fact which enables one to gauge the greatness
of that achievement. The Master of Charterhouse, Arch-
deacon Hale, whose great services to the Brotherhood and
to Gownboys have already been gratefully recorded — he
was indeed as much the second Founder of the Brotherhood
as Haig Brown was to be of the School — was known to be
adverse to the scheme, had indeed pledged his reputation
that it would never go through. It was thought that his
view would be that of the great majority of Carthusians,
DR. HAIG BROWN— THE REMOVAL 277
bound as they were by affection and loyalty to a place
which has always had a singular power of winning the
affection of those who live in it. Dr. Haig Brown boldly
put the question to the proof. He sent a circular to all
available Carthusians to obtain their opinion. The result
must have astonished even Haig Brown himself. The
majority was not less than ten to one in favour of the
Removal, though the vote was commonly coupled with
expressions of deep regret for the necessity.
Dr. Haig Brown, in his modest account of this plebiscite
and of what followed, quotes the pregnant answer of
Bishop Connop Thirlwall : " You ask about my feeling as
to the removal of the School. My feeling is that it should
remain on the present site ; my judgment says that it
should be immediately removed from it."
Thus, armed with the assent of old Carthusians, Haig
Brown went forward, and with his second-in-command,
the Rev. Frederick Poynder, an old Carthusian of Russell's
day, presented on May 1, 1865, a memorial to the Governors
to consider whether, if it should be thought desirable that
the School should be removed into the country, any and
what means exist for carrying that object into effect.
Lord Derby (who had previously been in strong opposition),
Lords Devon, Romney, Harrowby, Cranworth, Lord
Justice Turner, and the Master formed the Committee,
who made a report in 1866, in consequence of which the
Assembly of Governors resolved on May 2, 1866, as
follows : — " Upon Consideration of the Memorials of the
Schoolmaster and Usher, and of Certain Parents and
Guardians of Scholars, as to the Removal of the School
and the report of the Committee having reference to the
subject read at last Assembly, the Assembly were of
opinion that it is DESIRABLE to make arrangements for
removing the School into the Country." And this, let us
note, as beforesaid, was little more than two years from
their previous decision in the other direction. The book
is signed that day by the Archbishops of Canterbury and
York, the Duke of Buccleugh, the Earls of Derby and
Devon, Lord Justice Turner, and William Hale Hale. No
278 SAUNDERS— ELDER— ELWYN—HAIG BROWN
one has ever disputed the fact that this remarkable change
of front, which does the greatest credit to the open-
mindedness of the Governors, was due to the indomitable
spirit of William Haig Brown.
Then came, extending over several years, the details
of the change. First of all, the choice of a site. Here,
again, it is no secret that the same guiding spirit was
behind the Governors. Other sites had been considered —
Hitcham Bank, Taplow, for example. And the Governors
owned land at Hallingbury, where Sutton had originally
designed to place the School. But the happy fact that
Haig Brown possessed inspired local knowledge — for the
home of Mrs. Haig Brown * had been at Hambledon, a few
miles away — led him to the choice of the site at Godalming,
which was at the time in the market under the name of
the Deanery Farm Estate, then the property of the British
Land Company. The Committee of Governors who
visited it reported that it was " a singularly eligible site
for a Public School, having only one drawback — the want
of adequate facilities for boating." Waiving the draw-
back, the Governors bought the estimated 68| acres for
£9,450. Never was a happier purchase made.
That autumn the Governors got their Bill through
Parliament. I was present on the occasion — an under-
graduate from Cambridge — in company with my late and
my future Headmaster, Dr. Haig Brown, to hear the
momentous debate. Mr. Ayrton, no inconsiderable force
at that time, opposed it strongly, but Gladstone, who
showed great knowledge — it was easy to see whence he
had his brief — destroyed all Ayrton's arguments in a very
lucid speech, and the Bill was duly passed.
The same Governors' Assembly (Nov. 29, 1867) which
records the obtaining of the Bill, records also the sale of
5| acres of land, with the schoolhouses, Gownboys,
Saunderites, Verites, and Big School to Merchant Taylors'
School for £90,000, a sum so ludicrously below its value
that nothing can account for it save the desire to deal
* I can only here express my heart's tribute to one whose name
all Carthusians delight to honour.
THE REMOVAL 279
liberally with another Public School. This reason has
been freely given. It may be the true one, but, whatever
the cause, it is not too much to say that the Governors were
as badly advised in their sale of their London property, as
they had been well-inspired in their purchase of the
Godalming site.
The end was not quite yet. Much had to be done, and
the mere buildings were not a matter of a day. But the
recording of these things with any fullness seems to belong
rather to the History of the School at Godalming than to
this, though, since the moving force was still in London,
one may not omit all notice.
The Governors employed as their architect Mr. Philip
Hardwick, whose plans were accepted on March 18, 1868,
at an estimate of £49,000, which, in 1870, was increased to
£58,044, and rose still higher presently. This sum included
the three houses of the main building, now called the
" block-houses," a " Big-School " room, now the library,
with some half-dozen very inadequate classrooms attached,
a steam laundry, stables, and no more. The ground
purchased by the Governors, one may remind the reader,
included only " Upper Green," the copse, and the land on
which the School buildings stood, with the outlying portions
used for the Headmaster's kitchen garden. Under Green,
Lessington, Broom Leas were still in the far future, and
were added chiefly by private venture. The building
estimate did not include a chapel. An estimate for that
was presently given at £4,200, but for two years the
School was without a chapel, resorting to Shackleford
Church, two miles distant, on fine Sunday mornings, with
an evening service in " Big School " in the Sunday evenings.
In truth, the School was at its new start but poorly equipped,
and so remained for some years. There was no reproach
to the Governors in this, nor to the newly-formed Governing
Body of the School. The building costs soon gave the
go-by to the £90,000 and went far beyond it. The
Governors were not allowed by the Charity Commissioners
to increase their debt. They were compelled to wait and
do their addition, little by little, as money came into the
280 SAUNDERS— ELDER— ELWYN—HAIG BROWN
till. It was on this account that the eight boarding-
houses outside the ring fence — once there were nine — came
to be built, as so many other needful additions were made,
by private venture.
Two great changes which were involved in the Removal
need to be noted. The first was the handing over, under
the regulations of the Charity Commissioners, of the
government of the School to a Governing Body distinct
from the Governors of the Hospital, who retained the
government of the London establishment. The net
income of the Hospital branches was, by the same authority,
divided into two equal portions. The other great change
which went hand-in-hand with the Removal was the
abolition of the Nomination System for Foundation scholars
and the substitution of Competitive Examination. In-
stalments of this method had been suggested so far back
as 1813 by Dr. Russell, who had advised the opening
of one nomination each year by examination to boys
already in the School. He failed in his attempt, but in
1850 Dr. Saunders carried the matter through, and one
exhibition a year up to the number of four — presently
enlarged to eight — was granted to boys in the School.
But in 1864 Lord Derby, in the House of Lords, pledged
himself on behalf of the Governors, that under no circum-
stances would they consent either to the Removal of the
School or to the opening of the Foundation Scholarships to
competition. By the year 1867 both these points had
been conceded.
The reader can perhaps realise how hard it is for one,
who saw thirty-three out of the first thirty-four years of the
School's development at Godalming, to resist the tempta-
tion to recall some memories of that stirring and inspiring
time. But to do so would be to go beyond the purpose of
this History, which is that of the Monastery, Mansion,
Hospital, and School in London only. The ground, too,
has already been occupied by more capable writers— by
Dr. Haig Brown himself, by his son, Harold Haig Brown,
and by Mr. A. H. Tod. The day must come again here-
after when fresh histories will have to be written to include
THE REMOVAL 281
the future vicissitudes of our Great School, and to record
the deeds of Carthusians yet unborn. Already the
Carthusians of the forty years that have passed since the
School left its old home in London have helped to make
History. May the list always have on it names as noble
as those that made its History in the Past.
GERALD S. DA VIES.
Master's Lodge, Charterhouse, B.C.
The Feast of the Salutation,
1914.
AFTERMATH
IT would have been out of place to interrupt the course
of sober history by the constant insertion of personal
reminiscences, and yet, since the writer is one of the few
who are left to tell the tale of school life in London before
the Removal, I feel that some sort of a sketch of things as
they were will be of more than a passing interest to those
who only know things as they are. But the reader must be
warned that he will find nothing here but a mere disjointed
set of memories, which, however, may help him to add
some tinge of local colour to the picture.
I came to Charterhouse on Jan. 25, 1856, a month or
two after I was ten years old. I well remember my arrival
at the great gates, and how I was forthwith despatched to
the Medical Officer's house to be examined, and to have
my achievements in the way of epidemics duly recorded.
I had had nothing at all so far — not even medicine. And
having come through triumphantly, I was taken thence
to the Headmaster to see if I was " less apt for learning
than some are." The entrance examination was hardly
so successful as the other. I had no Greek and not much
more Latin. And nothing else counted in those days.
So, having asserted that " Monivi " was the perfect tense
of Moneo, I was duly passed, and began life as the lowest
(likewise the smallest) boy in the School, at the bottom of
the Under Petties. Here is the list of the Forms as they
then stood —
VI Form>|
V Form I Upper School.
Under Vj
282
THE SCHOOL IN 1856 283
IV Form [exempt from fagging].
Shell.
Ill Form.
II Form.
I Form.
Upper Petties.
Under Petties.
I am not sure if I wasn't placed too high — but it is too
late to remedy that now. What a crew of little irresponsibles
we were in the " Petties " to be sure ! Our education was
in the hands of the Rev. C. R. Dicken (who had been an
assistant Master under Russell). He did not appear in
School till ten o'clock — and he generally read the Times
while we " prepared." It was our chief ambition to untie
Dicken's shoestrings, while he was absorbed in the news-
paper, without being found out. Successes to failures
were in the proportion of about three to one.
There was a general examination once a year in Long
Quarter — April — when almost, as a matter of course, the
entire Form moved up. You had to know less than nothing
to escape promotion. " Double promo," i.e. a promotion
in between, was rare and highly valued. It may be said
that the Form teaching (except in the Petties) was, with
very few exceptions, good during the nine years that I was
in the School. The mathematics were, however, taught
by the Form masters, except in the case of the highest
division. And the French teaching was admittedly almost
a farce, though it was in the hands of a highly cultivated
gentleman, Alphonse Mariette, who accepted the situation
and caused us very little annoyance as a rule.
There were only three classrooms. The Forms for
the most part, when not up to a master, did their work in
" Big School," and some were even taken there " In
Form." " Horseshoes" — semicircular cockpits with a seat
all round the inside — were used for the purpose, and,
though not without drawbacks, cause much less waste of
time, where places have to be taken, than the fixed desk
system. But the distraction caused by taking a number
of Forms in one great room was quite another matter. If,
284 AFTERMATH
for example, while you were up to lesson in a " Horse-
shoe " a free fight was going on in the Form that was down
(each master took two Forms — one up, one down — and
this was at first the practice also at Godalming), it was
difficult to keep your attention fixed upon the more formal
engagements of Julius Caesar.
Every boy had the understood right of going out once
in each school for ten minutes. Two boys were allowed
out at a time from each form. It was realised, however,
after 250 years' experience — our Great Foundation was
never prone to make changes on imperfect evidence — that
the meeting of these units outside was apt to lead to
impromptu cricket matches, and the system came to an
end under Dr. Haig Brown.
Our day was divided as follows (summer and winter
alike) : — Prayers and first school, 8 a.m. Breakfast,
8.30. Second school, 9.30 (10 for the VI) to 12. Dinner,
1 o'clock. Third school, 2 to 4. Tea, 7 o'clock. Banco,
8 to 9. House prayers, 9 o'clock, at which time Under
School went to bed, Upper School sitting up till 11
o'clock.
It will be seen from this that afternoon school was
always from 2 to 4 o'clock, and consequently, in the depth
of winter, there was little time for games. The explana-
tion of this very bad arrangement lay in the fact that
" Big School " was unprovided with gas, or, indeed,
artificial light of any sort. Indeed, when a London fog
came on — and London fogs in those days were far more
frequent and far denser than now — the greater part of
the School was sent out to obtain lights. Candle ends,
tapers, tallow dips stuck into stone ginger-beer bottles,
were the chief illuminants. But study-fags could com-
mand more fancy articles. Big School on these occasions
was a strange sight, with its irregular dotting of lights
through the thick darkness. There were, however, always
in every Form one or two of the evil-disposed who were
ready, by the rapid sliding of a good-sized book all along
the line of desk, to plunge the Form in darkness. It has
285
been ever thus with those who are " less apt to learn than
some others."
It will be readily seen from all this that any success
which masters had in getting their forms taught was not
due to the machineries with which they were equipped.
That they had such success can be judged from the records
of the School.
On Wednesday every Form in the School, from the second
form upwards — the poet's soul was not vexed with verse
till he got into the second Form — did Latin verses. In
the earliest days of the School it had been a regulation of
the Governors that every Gownboy in the Upper School
should make and exhibit on the School board an exercise
in Latin verse. This nailing of your atrocities to the
board, like owls upon a barn door, had ceased to be law
in my day, but Latin verses were still done on Wednesdays
by ninety per cent, of the School. In that day, when Richard
Claverhouse Jebb was in Gownboys, there was generally
to be found, outside his study door, a queue of vicarious
poets waiting to get some verses done for them. It was
good perhaps for Jebb if for no one else. And at least it
ensured a consistent style in the Latin verse of the School.
The method, however, could not claim for itself the merit
of a wise subdivision of labour which could be urged for
the method of preparing Greek play, for example, in the
VI. One person, in that case, construed aloud, with the
aid of Mr. Bonn's English edition — Cribs were allowed to
the VI — and the last joined had to look the words out
afterwards and report to the others. I make no comment
on the value of the process, which, I need scarcely say, was
supplemented by individual effort by any one who took
any interest in scholarship.
There was one point in which I am compelled to say
that the School, in its then circumstances, stood superior
to the School in its subsequent circumstances — at any
rate so far as I have had any experience — I mean in the
matter of private and individual reading, and especially
in English literature. No doubt the fact which I have
recorded of the shutting into the houses during the winter
u
286 AFTERMATH
months of all the school after 4 or 4.30, aided by the fact
that the House Libraries were in Writing School and
the Under Long Rooms, and were open daily there, led to
a much larger use of books than I have ever known since.
The House Libraries were then of high quality moreover.
It was a rare thing for a member of the Sixth to leave the
School without having considerable knowledge of English
literature. And a good deal of private work got done.
Books were, in fact, a main resource under the circum-
stances, and, of course, the absence of other organisations
and the smaller number of preoccupations had their
say in the matter. The Public School boy of to-day, with
all the hours of his week mapped out for him, is no longer
thrown on his own resources.
Life in the Houses in that day was, no doubt, far
more Spartan than in these. I have already said that
in that respect Charterhouse of my day was not, so far
as I know, very conspicuous or very different from other
schools. All schools alike have adopted a higher standard
of comfort. We were called at 7. There were no washing
appliances in the bedrooms. We had to go down, across
some very cold stone passages with free opening to the outer
air, to " Cocks " * wherein were the usual plug basins,
and a gigantic hot-water tap. As all Under School had
to be out of Cocks before 7.45 to make room for Upper
School, and as the basins were not numerous and we
deferred our descent to the last moment, a large number
resorted to the tap, primitive but effective, after which
we returned to our bedrooms and finished our dressing.
School door was closed at 8 o'clock to the moment, and
it was no uncommon thing to see " Uppers " rushing
schoolwards with a coat and waistcoat on one arm and a
pair of braces on the other, in the despairing hope that they
could complete the operation inside the porch of Big School
(which they often did).
Breakfast for the Under School was at 8.30; for
* Gownboy " Cocks " was a portion of " Cloisters " divided
off and fitted with basins, taps, etc.
DAILY FOOD 287
Upper School at 9.0. We had, as Unders, a roll and a
pat of butter and half a pint of milk. When you got
to the Fourth Form you had a pint of tea instead of
milk, and an Upper had the privilege of having his tea
(which, however, he bought for himself) or his coffee
made in his own private pot by his own private fag.
Through the services of that same fag, moreover, he could
indulge in many nice fancies with regard to the dressing
of his roll or his toast — plain toast, buttered toast, frits
(a round of bread buttered and then toasted — requiring
skill and patience), splits (a round toasted on both sides,
then divided and retoasted — the man who could do this
really well was an artist), and " frittered splits," an achieve-
ment only possible to genius. The scene at the big fire
in Writing School when every fag was trying to cook
these various and precarious delicacies was unforgettable.
It brought out evil passions at times. There was, as in
after life, always the self-assertive person who shoved you
out of your special hole and took it himself. It is true,
if this thing was done too outrageously, it was an unwritten
law that you might " bar his round," i.e. ram his precious
toast against the red-hot bars. Sometimes you availed
yourself of this law — that is to say, if the other fellow was
smaller than you were — not else. Dinner was, for Gown-
boys, not in the House but in the Gownboy Dining Hall,*
at the south end of the cloisters, which acted for us as a
covered approach. The dinner, I may say at once, was
good and ample and well cooked, but with a certain red
tape monotony which was somewhat typical of the place.
You could tell pretty well, if anybody had cared to look
so far forward, what you would be eating that day year,
that is to say, if you knew what you were eating at the
hour itself. And nothing was ever allowed to vary the
routine. Thus there was a certain plum-pudding, known
as " stodge," which was served on Sundays. I may at
once admit that it was quite good food. But at some
time or other it had been condemned by one of the influences
that be in a House. And for years and years no one touched
* This room is now the Brothers' Library.
288 AFTERMATH
it. One might have thought that — though its rejection
was on its merits unjustifiable — some occasion might have
been seized by the authorities to have withdrawn the
much-maligned dish, say, for example, the beginning of
a new quarter or a new year. But year in and year out
that pudding came in and went forth, and no official
suggested a change. At last, one day a certain person
of independent character (I may not name him), and
of a position to carry it through, ate that pudding while
the House had to wait patiently and watch him. He
repeated the process Sunday after Sunday. Somebody
else fell in with his fancy, and then somebody else ; and
then everybody. And the pudding — always religiously
served in full bulk as for the entire House, — which had
year after year gone out uneaten, came at last to its own.
The evening meal, 6.30 for Unders and 7.0 for
Uppers, was a repetition of breakfast. During the greater
part of the tune that I was at Charterhouse no meat
was given with breakfast and tea, but at the end of the
time meat was given at one of these meals. We could
reinforce our meals at our own expense by relishes bought
from the House butler or from the shop.
The said shop was conducted in a very small under-
ground den or dungeon about eight feet square below the
classroom at the west end of Big School. The shopman,
one Tolfree, attended twice a week on Wednesdays and
Saturdays from 2 to 4, or till such time as the supply
held out. On an extra half-holiday he had to be specially
summoned. He lived in Wilderness Row — I may mention,
by the way, that both he and his father before him held
a similar office at Westminster School, where they tossed
the pancake on Shrove Tuesday — and on our side of the
wall there grew a tree, known as Big Tree, whose upper
branches commanded a view of Tolfree's shop. Fags
were sent up this tree to holloa at the unhappy man till
he came. His foods were excellent but simple, and few
in number, " catpies," sausage rolls, fruit tarts, bathbuns,
penny buns, and abernethies were his unvarying menu.
The refinements of the modern shop were yet to come.
FAGGING 289
I have had to speak several times of fagging. That
system as it existed at Charterhouse in my day was
certainly very different from anything which bears its name
to-day. It was much severer and more exacting. To
many minds, indeed, especially those of the anxious parent,
it conveyed a sense of horror as something which implied
a system of hard labour and oppression for their boys.
I may say at once that, having passed through it at
a period when it was in its full swing, that unfavourable
view is not mine at all. And so far from regarding it as
a source of oppression I should, having regard to the con-
dition of things in Public Schools of that day, when super-
vision by master was in embryo, I should reckon it,
properly watched and limited, as an important safeguard
against bullying. Most Public School men of that day
would, I think, agree with me that the really dangerous
bullying — the bullying which made a lad's life a burden
to him — seldom or never came through fagging, nor from
the privileged " Upper," but from the bully pure and
simple, often in the same form, the same bedroom, as his
victims. The system by which all Unders were locked
into the bedrooms at 9.15 contributed to this latter
result to some degree. There were doubtless Uppers
who were by nature bullies and showed themselves so,
but the fagging system did not in any way increase their
opportunities, but rather diminished them, since, as I shall
presently show, each fag who was attached to a special
Upper would, in case of being bullied by some one else, find
a champion in that same Upper. The system, however,
must be explained. Only the first twelve — or occasionally
fourteen — members of the House (in Gownboys) were
granted their privileges as Uppers with the right to fag.
No one below the Upper V received those privileges. The
Under V were in the waiting stage and the IV were free
from fagging. It generally happened that the number
of fags in the House was considerably in excess of the
number of Uppers. Once only do I remember a time
when there was a shortage of fags — which, of course, made
things for a time harder for so many of us as there were.
290 AFTERMATH
Every Upper had his own special fag who made his
tea and toast, sometimes he had one for each of these
services. Also he had study fags, sometimes quite a
number. The standard of housemaidery amongst us was
not, I grieve to say, high. We " kicked up no end of a
dust," as a study fag once said in defence of his own efforts,
but we let it settle down again in the same place as it had
got up from. Our carpet beating and cushion banging
was, however, good for trade. And we really did take a
pride in our owner's studies. I may here say with regard
to being told off as tea and toast fag (which included
other forms of cooking) to some one Upper, so far from
our regarding it as a tie or a grievance no fag of any charac-
ter was ever willing to be without it, or to find himself a loose
horse in the House. Not to be chosen by some one was
a sign of incompetence. And I would not myself exchange
such slight experience in self-helpfulness and resource
as one got from it in life, for things which seem to be of
greater value. The relationship between an Upper and his
special fag was mostly kindly, and I cannot think of any
Upper who ill used his own fag.
But besides the special relationship mentioned above,
fags had to be prepared to run messages, to answer
the cry of " fag," and, within reason, to do whatever
they were asked. An Upper sitting in Gownboy Hall
had only to call "fag" at the top of his voice, and the
nearest fag — if there were several present it was the lowest
— had to answer. There is a well-known Charterhouse
story — as it is told again by the chief actor in his History
of Charterhouse,* we may accept it as true — of how the
survival of this method once saved the life, a life most
valuable to Charterhouse, of a well-known assistant master
when he was a monitor in Verites. He was swimming
in the " bell hole " and found himself sinking, when
with great presence of mind he called " fag." There was
an immediate rush to answer it and the situation was saved,
and so was the monitor.
Perhaps the chief abuse of the fagging system lay in
* A. H. Tod.
FAGGING 291
the fact that it left certain things to be done by fags which
should have been done by servants. Thus the very heavy
coal-scuttles required for our huge fireplaces were lugged
about by two appointed " fire fags," generally chosen
for their size and strength. The " basinite " system was
less objectionable, though we disliked it, perhaps, more
than anything else because of the waste of time which
it involved. Every week three fags — a basinite set —
were told off to valet the four monitors. We had to wait
on them from 7 a.m. to the moment when those great
men made their final rush for morning school : to dry their
towels, lay out their garments, to get them hot water, and
the like. The same again at dinner time and the same
at tea time. Our dislike to it was mainly due to the fact
that it was very dull. There was little to do while you
were waiting for the arrival of the monitors, but to organise
tallow candle races in the Great House cistern hard by.
I have since realised that that cistern must have been
the source of supply not merely of washing water but of
drinking water to the House. And since collisions between
the competing candlesticks were frequent, and the com-
petitors sank to the bottom and remained there, it speaks
well for the original purity of the water supply that no
complaints were ever made of its tasting of tallow candle.
I believe I am right in saying that " fire fagging "
was abolished and basinites modified by the Public School
Commission, who, otherwise, did not find much fault with
the Charterhouse fagging system. The blacking of boots
was, I may mention, not a part, as is usually supposed,
of our business. When my own mother learnt that her
ten-year-old was to go to Charterhouse, she, like a wise
woman, set to work to have me taught in all the utilities
of household life — including the art of the shoeblack.
That last equipment was not needed, yet I am grateful
for the training which laid in me, perhaps, the foundation
of that technical knowledge of art which has been such
a solace to me through life.
There was no sick-room in Gownboys itself. It was
in the matron's house, a separate building on the other
292 AFTERMATH
side of Scholars' Court. It was, if you were feeling really
bad, sometimes a severe ordeal in winter or wet weather
to go out at night to seek the matron, and the system
on paper was dangerous. Yet I never knew any harm
traceable to it. It is, indeed, a remarkable fact, which
I have never been able to explain to myself, that with
very few precautions, and very few machineries for health,
and indeed with very many circumstances which would
be regarded in a modern Public School as fatal, we enjoyed
an extraordinary immunity, not only from epidemics,
but from serious individual illness. I was at school nine
years. I can remember no epidemic which ever went
beyond six victims. That was mumps, if I remember
rightly. There was no death in the school in those nine
years, and no case of extreme anxiety. I cannot, for
example, recall any serious lung case. Appendicitis had
not then been invented, but none of its substitutes were
in evidence. No doubt Charterhouse in London has always
been an exceptionally healthy place, but the fact is not
enough to explain to me, knowing what I do of schoolboys
and their illnesses, how the above-mentioned state of
things came about. Written down on paper the risks
seem very grave, yet in effect during nine years — and nine
years is a long time — they seem to have been non-existent.
The Gownboy matron, when I joined the House, was
Elizabeth Jeffkins, " Mother J," who had been there
since Russell's day, who may have set eyes on all the great
ones of that day, and who left behind her a memory as
one of the best and kindest women who ever looked after
boys. She died, the dear old lady, at the end of my
first quarter. Our medical officer, Doctor John Miles,
a man whose knowledge of human nature perhaps was
in advance of his medical science, must at least claim
the praise of having kept us healthy by simple means.
He had, in his repertoire, two main remedies. If he sus-
pected a boy of wishing to sham he gave him black draught ;
if he thought he was really unwell he gave him brown
mixture. The would-be shammer feared the black, the
ailing boy feared the brown, and so on the whole the sick list
GAMES 293
was kept fairly free. There was, I know, a third remedy
known as white mixture, but I have no idea what class of
crime this was intended to meet ; and I have even heard
of a fever mixture, but I think it was a mere ideal. I
would add that I never heard of a clinical thermometer
in the matron's house, in those days, and I doubt its
existence. I am sure that there was no boy in the School
who knew (or cared) what his temperature ought to be.
Though games had not then taken the place either
at Charterhouse or any other Public School which they
now hold, they were then, as they always will be, of great
importance in the schoolboy mind. To cricket, of course, the
first place was given. Upper Green was given over entirely
to the Upper eleven, and to the immediate candidates for
that eleven, for practice and for matches ; while Under Green
was used by the second eleven and by all the rest of the
school. By plentiful rolling, beating, and watering — all of
which we did ourselves — we obtained on Upper Green very
decent pitches, though by no means the run-getting pitches
known to the present-day Carthusian. But in that day,
with the exception of the Oval, Fenner's ground, and the
Brighton ground, there were no run-getting grounds
such as now may be counted by the score all over England,
and we were not far below the average in that respect.
You had to watch the ball, no doubt — not the worst thing
for a young player — and this was true also of fielding,
where the ball was apt to come off the buildings — we ran
everything out — at perplexing angles. But good cricketers
were made out of that ground, in spite of the fact that
the numbers from which choice could be made were so
small — less, often, than a hundred, since day-boys, as a
rule, took very little share in games. Confining myself
to my own time, we had the Rev. F. G. Inge (I was his
cricket fag), who played for Oxford in those vintage years
which saw Inge himself and R. A. Mitchell in the dark
blue and the Hon. C. G Lyttelton, Plowden, and Daniell
for light blue. A little later, Sir Courtenay E. Boyle played
several years for Oxford and the Rev. C. E. B. Nepean
kept wicket for that University. We played, as a rule,
294 AFTERMATH
no other school at cricket in those days, and the foreign
matches by which we set most store were I. Zingari, M.C.C.,
the Guards, and Royal Engineers. There was a tradition,
by the way, that he who hit the chapel clock thereby won
the match. I never saw it done, though it was by no
means an impossible stroke. There was one practice
wicket whence the attempt was often made ; but though
the windows of the Reader — long-suffering man — were
often broken close by, the clock itself remained un-
touched.
Football in the open was in those years, 1856-64, in its
pupa condition. The schools which played the Rugby
game had, of course, for many years lived under a settled
constitution. But the day of Association football was not
yet. That game did not receive its charter in the shape
of set rules to be observed all over England till, I think,
the year 1865. Meanwhile, Charterhouse, Westminster,
and one or two other schools played each their own game
in the open. Our own game and that of Westminster
came, perhaps, the nearest to Association as it was after-
wards created. It is needless to say, however, that the
distribution of the field as we now know it had no existence.
Goalkeeper was the only member of an eleven to whom a
definite post was assigned. The other ten men played
each on his own account to get the ball and keep it and, if
possible, get it between the enemy's goal-posts. The
names " forward," " wings," " centre," " half-back,"
" back " were unknown, and indeed did not come into
existence until " Association " had gone some little time
on its way. The art of passing was scarcely heeded. It
was, in a certain sense, a selfish game compared to the
present-day development. Handling the ball was allowed,
and the ball, if caught, or stopped at first bound, might be
used in a drop-kick. In other respects, with regard to the
rules (unwritten) of charging, offside, etc., the game was
much as it is now. And it was, even as it stood, a very
good game, having in it all the undeveloped possibilities of
the beautiful game of to-day. It was between the years
1859 and 1864 that the rules were printed, for the first
FOOTBALL 295
time, so far as I know. The elevens which were captained
by the Rev Tames Butter, G. J. Cookson, B. F. Hartshorne,
Lord Muu Mackenzie, and Edgar Gibson (Bishop of
Gloucester) were those which witnessed the great change
when the open game, fostered chiefly by Charterhouse and
Westminster, blossomed into the new " Association "
game. And it may be said at once that amongst those
elevens were players who, individually, have hardly been
surpassed, even in the brilliant days of Charterhouse foot-
ball which were to follow. The ground (Under Green), it
may be said, was very fast.
Cloister football may claim a much higher antiquity,
but I have, in the absence of all records, totally failed to
discover how long it had existed under any kind of organised
rule. " Cloisters," my readers will remember, was the
long, brick, barrel-vaulted arcade which the fourth Duke
of Norfolk had built upon the site of the monastery cloister
ambulatory to lead from his mansion to his tennis court.
It had a blind wall on the west side (the front of the old
line of cells) and was about 10 ft. broad, with buttresses
on its east side separating windows which opened on
to Green, at a height of some 3 ft. 6 ins. from the
ground. At the north end of this arcade was a narrow
door opening into Gownboys ; at the south end a similar
door opened on to Green. And these two doors were the
goals. When the game was played by a limited number
of players — say, nine a side or, even better still, six a side —
it was a really fine game. But when a big game was
ordered, such as Gownboys v. School, in which all fags had
to block the respective goals and the mass of players filled
the arcade, it was, in my opinion, a very poor game indeed,
consisting of a series of " squashes " or dead blocks, in
which the ball was entirely lost to sight, and a mass of
humanity surged and heaved senselessly, often for as much
as half an hour at a time. But, whether played by many
of by few, the game was unavoidably rough. Hard knocks
had to be taken cheerfully. A fierce charge was apt to
send a player with his head against the wall, and much skin
was lost at times. But it was a fine training for keeping
296 AFTERMATH
the temper under very trying circumstances. Strange to
say, however, I never remember a serious injury nor a
broken bone at the Cloister game.
Racquets, like open football, was for us at least in a
very prehistoric stage. I have spoken elsewhere of two
open courts which existed in the north-east corner of
Green, hard up against Verites. One of these had a side
wall of a kind, the other was a mere paved court with one
wall. These courts had been always used for a kind of
bat fives, played with an ordinary racquet ball and a
wooden " bat " of the shape and size of a battledore. It
was called " tennis," having, however, strangely little
resemblance to that ancient game. But, somewhere early
in the 'sixties, after the replastering and improvement of
the walls, a proper racquet was used, and the game took
the form of racquets so nearly as it might, under its
imperfect conditions, without side walls. At the end of
1864, however, the Racquet Cup was instituted — for
single racquets — by the present (1914) Master of Charter-
house and George E. Smythe, a very humble commence-
ment to the game in which Charterhouse was to become
famous.
We had no fives courts, a fact which I am afraid was
somewhat typical of the singular want of enterprise on the
part of the authorities so far as our games were concerned,
though it resulted perhaps in a larger amount of enterprise
on our own part. There were quite a number of places
round and about where, by a little paving and plastering,
courts might have been made as individual in character
and as good for the game as the Eton pepper-box court.
But they came not, and we were content to get casual
knock-ups here, there, and everywhere.
It is needless to say that we were no " wet bobs " in any
shape. We lay too far from the river for boating, and the
deeds of Philip Pearson (Pennant) who rowed for Cambridge,
of Canon Weldon Champneys (Oxford), and Archdeacon
Seymour (Oxford) were certainly not due to any facilities
which existed at Charterhouse in my day. I remember
ATHLETICS 297
nothing in the way of water larger than the tosh-cans with
which we were in the habit of watering Green, and,
incidentally, ourselves also.
So, too, we had no bathing. But, in the year 1864,
when Dr. Haig Brown became Headmaster, he allowed
the VI to go in summer to a certain beautiful bath, "Peer-
less pool " (originally " Perilous pool "), in Clerkenwell, to
our great satisfaction.
" Athletic Sports " took their place amongst school
organisations also during these same nine years — the first
meeting was held, I think, in 1860 — and they at once
proved a success. The very first year of their institution
brought out no less an athlete than Richard Everard
Webster (Lord Alverstone), probably the best runner over
a distance of ground that the School, and Cambridge
afterwards, have ever produced ; while, in the same year,
Arthur Frederick Clarke (Archdeacon Clarke), who presently
won the three miles for Oxford, won the mile in the third
class. The same period saw the Hon. F. S. O'Grady (now
Lord Guillamore), who represented Oxford in the high
jump, and William Heaton Cooper, who was one of the
best hurdlers that Cambridge ever possessed. The short
races were run on turf, the long races on turf and rough
gravel. The age was not then beset by the craze for
records, and no comparison is possible between a mile as
run to-day and a mile run in that day at Charterhouse,
especially when we remember that a serious though short
hill had to be four times negotiated in completing the
distance.
But in no respect was the difference between the
school life of that day and of this more marked than in the
lack of provision — Charterhouse was in no way remarkable
amongst Public Schools herein — for any humanising tastes,
outside of athletics, which a boy might possess. It is
indeed probable that we were in advance of a good many
schools of that day. For the Governors had made it a
law that every Gownboy should learn to sing, whether he
had a voice and an ear — a good many had neither — or
whether he had not. And so every Monday and Thursday,
298 AFTERMATH
at noon, a large number of Gownboys, and a percentage of
boarders and dayboys who took singing as an extra,
gathered in the Governors' Room. John Hullah, one of
those famous musicians in the list which holds the names of
Pepusch * and Cousens, Stevens and Horsley, was organist,
and conducted the class. He was one of the most cultured
and most fascinating of men, one who had known Men-
delssohn in his English visits, and a friend of such men as
Charles Kingsley, and many another whose name counted
in that day. For Kingsley, indeed, he set many of his
best-known songs to music : " Three Fishers," " The
Storm," " Clear and Cool," " The Last Buccaneer," and
other songs which deserve a longer life than has been
given to them. These were often produced for the first
time at the School concert held in May, in the Great Hall.
It was a rich treat when Hullah, before the arrival of the
body of the class, would, to a favoured few of us, sing
over one of these new settings in his fine baritone voice.
But to learn an instrument — piano, violin, violoncello
— was hardly possible. It is true that here and there
an enthusiast kept a piano in his study, or even in the
monitors' room, but to obtain lessons on the said instru-
ments was wholly out of the question.
And one other taste might be cultivated. Struan
Robertson, whose connection with Charterhouse lasted
from first to last for fifty years, ran the drawing class — an
extra subject then — from 2 o'clock to 4 on half holidays.
A more inspiring and more tactful teacher could not have
been chosen, and, with no machinery at his disposal and in
the face of great difficulties, he kept his class together and
produced some very high results. But it is obvious that
in so small a School, where all hands — one may say legs
also — were needed for cricket and football, if the School
was to hold its own, it was well-nigh impossible for a boy,
when he reached the stage of trial for the elevens, to work
at drawing on a half holiday. And the production of
great masterpieces was seriously interfered with. There
was no Leech prize in those days — naturally, since John
* Pepusch and Stevens were buried in Charterhouse Chapel.
OTHER INTERESTS 299
Leech * did not die till 1863 — but there were drawing prizes
under a different name.
And there ends the list of cultured interests which
were provided for Public School boys in that day, whether
at Charterhouse or elsewhere, so far as I know. As I have
already pointed out, however, this fact, combined with
other circumstances, drove us largely to the resource of
reading in our odd half-hours in the House, and the House
libraries were of such excellent quality and so wisely laid
open to our use, and so ready to our hand, that a compensa-
tion was by no means wanting. And here I think that my
contemporaries would wholly agree with me.
I have tried to describe faithfully the features which
made up our ordinary life at the School in those days.
There were, of course, a large variety of unconsidered
trifles that, as one looks back, went to make up the picture.
Our life was of necessity — and I am quite sure of the
wisdom of this restriction — a cloistered life, shut off as
far as possible from all touch with London except on
" going-out " Saturdays (weekly for Upper School and
fortnightly for Under School), when from noon on Saturday
to nine o'clock on Sunday — afterwards reduced to seven
o'clock when the special School services were instituted —
boys were allowed, with written invitation, to go out to
friends. Otherwise we never passed the gates. I think
it must have happened to myself, who had not many friends
in London, to have several times passed a whole quarter
without going outside. Let me assure the reader that we
felt it — most of us — no imprisonment. We got the run of
many things from which we were perhaps crowded out on
other days.
And let no one suppose that the refining influences of
the outer world did not penetrate to our seclusion. I can
remember the fevered excitement which seized upon all
* John Leech and William Makepeace Thackeray dined on
Founder's Day, 1863, for the last time. Both were nominated as
Stewards of Founder's Day, 1864 — on which day the present (1914)
Master of Charterhouse made the Latin oration. But both were
dead before that day came round.
300 AFTERMATH
r
classes in England in the month that preceded the great
fight between little Mr. Thomas Sayers and tall Mr. John
Heenan. We go mad over sport nowadays too many
times in a week to concentrate our madness into a single
dementity such as that was. The shops were ablaze with
small flags, handkerchiefs, and coloured prints of the two
men with their previous achievements. Lithographs and
woodcuts were sold in every shape and at every corner.
It was said — but " let them say "• — that bishops, including
several leading Governors of Charterhouse, were present
at the fight in plain clothes and false noses. Every day
sheets and sheets of the productions, of which I have
spoken, found their way into Charterhouse, via day-boys
and the servants, and were duly posted on the notice
boards of the Long-rooms. The French Master's room,
" New School," was decorated for him with a collection,
which, if it existed to-day, might sell for a king's ransom.
But the owners merely paid for them in French "lines" which
never got done. Better still do I remember the morning
after the fight, when the Times appeared with the whole
of one side devoted to the details, and even the Headmaster
so far gave himself away as to make to the Vlth furtive
allusions to Dares and Entellus, to Epeius and Euryalus.
I am reminded here that I was unjust in a previous
page in omitting Fencing and Boxing as two of the tastes
which a boy might cultivate. Angelo, whose name was a
household word in London of that day, attended once a
week in Gownboy Writing School. He had among his
teachers one magnificent ex-guardsman, who taught
boxing, and whose reputation stood so high that he had
even been matched — but it never came off — to box with
Jem Mace, champion of England — the boxer, not so much
the fighter (the two things had a difference in those days),
of all time. From this admirable teacher I had many
most valuable clouts on the head.
Our Assembly of Governors of that date contained one
or two men who, from time to time, had a Derby favourite
— Lord Derby, to wit, and Lord Palmerston. Sir Joseph
Hawley, too — a Carthusian though not a Governor, and
GOVERNORS' MEETINGS 301
almost as good a judge of art and letters as he was of a
horse — had a way of winning Derbies — he did so four times
in all — and we did not fail to make record of the Carthusian
triumph. We had our shilling and sixpenny sweeps —
honourably conducted, I am sure, though I never drew a
starter, but without perhaps the knowledge that should
underlie these enterprises. For example, since the daily
papers did not then give complete lists of " probable
starters," we were at the mercy of the knowledge of the
promoters, which did not go far. And if you drew a
probable starter it was one which had probably started
the year before. These little uncertainties, however,
served to discourage gambling, though not so effectually
as the method adopted by a certain House Master —
though at a later period — who, hearing of a Derby sweep
in his House, sent for the promoter, learnt who had drawn
what, and undertook to hold the stakes. That night,
after the race, he solemnly read out the names of the
winners in his Long Room and, calling them up, sent them
with their winnings to the Treasurer of the Charterhouse
Lifeboat. It is said that Derby sweeps hung fire in that
House for many years.
When I speak of Governors I ought not to omit one
feature in the life of us Gownboys by which we were
brought, from time to time, into the presence of very
famous men. Whenever there was a Governors' Assembly
there was a special half holiday, which, however, was lost
upon Gownboys, since we were called upon to form a guard
of honour in the lobby of the Master's Lodge. There we
waited, skirmishing about in the entrance court, till the
porter in his gorgeous gown, as a Governor's coach hove
in sight, shouted the warning : " 'Arrowby," " 'Owe,"
" Palmerston," " Russell," " Durby," and we hustled into
our places, while the great men walked between our lines
into the Master's Lodge.
One appalling incident can never be forgotten. As
Lord John Russell, his hat pressed down on to his shoulders,
his wizened and expressive countenance half hidden by,
and half projecting from, his many-folded stock, passed
302 AFTERMATH
along to the door, a certain Gownboy, who stammered
badly and who also imagined himself to be talking in a
whisper, was heard to say in the most audible voice,
" This way to the monkey house ! " And the interview
which the monitors subsequently held with that Gownboy
was understood to be not wholly for his peace. But if
any one ever suffered through these ceremonies — which I
can only look back upon with the greatest interest — some
others gained. For it was the custom for a Governor to
tip his nominee if he saw him in the line. The modest
youth used to be pushed forward a little by his sym-
pathising fellows — not perhaps wholly unmindful of the
probable " sport " of a pot of jam at tea that night.
Royalty never came, and those who were Royal nominees
had to wrap themselves up in their pride and go without
tips.
Of Founder's Day, as it was then celebrated, a word
should be written. Gownboys only remained behind for
Dec. 12, the rest of the School having gone home the
day before. We ate, of course, strange foods in large
amounts at breakfast and dinner in Hall in Gownboys,
and at five o'clock in the afternoon came the Memorial
Service in Chapel, which was followed by the annual Latin
oration delivered by the head Gownboy in the Governors'
room. The oration took a wide range, dealing with many
points of public and of Carthusian interest ; * and when it
ended the vistors advanced one at a time to the Rostra
and placed a gift in the orator's trencher. On at least
one occasion the sum discovered in the hat, when all was
over, amounted to over £200. The little wooden pulpit,
dignified by the name of the Rostra, still remains in the
Governors' room.
Then followed the dinner, which did not differ from
the same function in these days. Thackeray was a frequent
visitor on Founder's Day, as on other occasions. He
dined and spoke at Founder's Day dinner on Dec. 12,
1863, twelve days before his death; John Leech,! remember,
* So many of these orations are extant that I may refer the
Carthusian reader to them without further description.
THACKERAY 803
sitting nearly opposite to him. It was a great delight to
us Gownboys to get him after one of these dinners, as he
smoked his cigar out on Green — for smoking in Great Hall
was at that date deemed a kind of sacrilege — and have
talk with him of his own schooldays. I can remember
hearing him describe the " scraunch," which he declared
he still felt, when his nose gave way in the fight with
George Stovin Venables in Penny's House in Wilderness
Row. His pockets were generally full of coin, which he
distributed liberally to any small boys who, he thought,
could do with it, and I doubt if he always reserved enough
for his cab fare home.
One visit of his to Charterhouse deserves to be recorded.
I give the story on the authority of the Rev. John William
Irvine, who told it to me. Irvine was in Gownboys
and " knew Thackeray at home." When the Newcomes
was running through its later numbers, Thackeray one day
appeared at Gownboy door and asked for Irvine, and then,
taking him by the arm, said, " John, I am going to tell you
a great secret. Colonel Newcome is going to be a Codd."
And he therewith asked to be taken to a Codd's rooms. It
was not, strictly speaking, allowed to us to visit a Codd's
rooms, but it was often done and where the Codd was a
trustworthy person no objection was made. And Irvine
knew one, Captain Light, a blind pensioner, whom I well
remember as being always led into Chapel on Sundays by
his daughter. To his room * Irvine took Thackeray, and
they had tea there while Thackeray, sitting very silent,
said Irvine, listened to the talk and heard Chapel bell go
for evening Chapel. It was then, I think, that the beautiful
" Adsum " incident, which few men, Carthusian or non-
Carthusian, care to read with any one else sitting in the
room, took shape in Thackeray's mind.
And I do not know that I can better end this chapter
of desultory memories of Charterhouse School life in a
bygone day, than by merely quoting in full length the
* By the aid of an old Charterhouse servant, Robert Wright,
who was House Butler at the time, I have been able to identify
the room as No. 70 in XVI Staircase, Preacher's Court.
304 AFTERMATH
passage from the Newcomes which describes Founder's
Day as he and we knew it.
" Mention has been made once or twice in the course
of this history of the Greyfriars School — where the Colonel
and Clive and I had been brought up — an ancient founda-
tion of the time of James I, still subsisting in the heart of
London City. The death-day of the Founder of the place
is still kept solemnly by Cistercians. In their Chapel,
where assemble the boys of the School, and the fourscore
old men of the Hospital, the Founder's Tomb stands, a
huge edifice, emblasoned with heraldic decorations and
clumsy carved allegories. There is an old hall, a beautiful
specimen of the architecture of James' time ; an old hall ?
many old halls ; old staircases, old passages, old chambers,
decorated with old portraits, walking in the midst of which,
we walk as it were in the early seventeenth century. To
others than Cistercians, Greyfriars is a dreary place possibly.
Nevertheless, the pupils educated there love to revisit it ;
and the oldest of us grow young again for an hour or two
as we come back into those scenes of childhood.
" The custom of the School is that on the 12th of
December, the Founder's Day, the head Gownboy shall
recite a Latin oration, in praise Fundatoris Nostri, and upon
other subjects ; and a goodly company of old Cistercians
is generally brought together to attend this oration : after
which we go to Chapel and hear a sermon ; after which
we adjourn to a great dinner, where old Condisciples meet,
old toasts are given, and speeches are made. Before
marching from the oration hall to Chapel, the stewards
of the day's dinner, according to old-fashioned rite, have
wands put into their hands, walk to church at the head
of the procession, and sit there in places of honour. The
boys are already in their seats with smug fresh faces
and shining white collars ; the old black-gowned pensioners
are on their benches ; the Chapel is lighted, and Founder's
Tomb, with its grotesque carvings, monsters, heraldries,
darkles and shines with the most wonderful shadows and
lights. There he lies, Fundator Noster, in his ruff and gown,
awaiting the Great Examination Day. We oldsters,
be we never so old, become boys again as we look at that
familiar old tomb and think how the seats are altered since
FUNDATOB NOSTER.
FOUNDER'S TOMB (DETAIL). 1615.
FOUNDER'S DAY 305
we were here, and how the Doctor — not the present Doctor,
but the Doctor of our time — used to sit yonder, and his
awful eye used to frighten us shuddering boys on whom
it lighted ; and how the boy next us would kick our shins
during service time, and how the monitor would cane
us afterwards because our shins were kicked. Yonder sit
forty cherry-cheeked boys thinking about home and
holidays to-morrow. Yonder sit some threescore old
gentlemen pensioners of the Hospital, listening to the
prayers and the psalms. You hear them coughing feebly
in the twilight — the old reverend black gowns. Is
Codd Ajax alive, you wonder ? — the Cistercian lads called
these old gentlemen Codds, I know not wherefore — I
know not wherefore — but is old Codd Ajax alive, I wonder ?
or Codd Soldier ? or kind old Codd Gentleman ? or has
the grave closed over them ? A plenty of candles lights
up this Chapel and this scene of youth and age and early
memories and pompous death. How solemn the well-
remembered prayers are, here uttered again in the place
where in childhood we used to hear them ! How beautiful
and decorous the rite ; how noble the ancient words of
the supplications which the priest utters and to which
generations of fresh children and troops of bygone seniors
have cried Amen under these arches ! The service
for Founder's Day is a special one ; one of the psalms
selected being the thirty-seventh, and we hear : —
" ' 23. The steps of a good man are ordered by the
Lord, and he delighteth in his way.
" ' 24. Though he fall, he shall not be utterly cast
down : for the Lord upholdeth him with His hand.
' 25. I have been young, and now am old ; yet
have I not seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed
begging their bread.'
"As we came to this verse, I chanced to look up
from my book towards the swarm of black-coated
pensioners ; and amongst them — amongst them — sat
Thomas Newcome."
APPENDIX A
THE BUILDINGS
CHARTERHOUSE SQUARE
AN open space of about three acres, the property of the
governors of Charterhouse. When the monastery was enclosed
within walls, this space remained in use as a churchyard,
having a chapel within the green space. It was known as
Charterhouse Churcheyarde, later Charterhouse Yard or
Square. It afterwards became a fashionable place of residence,
being surrounded by good houses. Queen Catherine Parr
lived here with her second husband Henry Nevill, Lord Latimer,
before her marriage with Henry VIII.* Sir Arthur Darcy, Sir
Mannaduke Constable, the Earl of Angus, Sir William Parr,
Sir Christopher Wray, the Marchioness of Dorset, Lord Charles
Howard of Effingham (son of the Admiral), Lord Winchelsea,
Lord Grey, John Lelande, and others from time to time had
their homes here. The French and Venetian ambassadors had
houses in the square in Henry VIII's, Edward VI's, Mary's,
and Elizabeth's reigns. Jean de Dinteville, who appears in
Holbein's Ambassadors, lived here in 1533, and his successor,
Charles Solier, Sieur de Morette (also painted by Holbein), in
1534. De la Motte Fenelon was here in 1570. Lord North
built a mansion (as well as that which became Howard House)
in the north-east corner of the square. This afterwards passed
to the Duke of Rutland, whose name still survives there in
Rutland Place, the site of the house. Sir William Davenant
lived in Rutland House, and in Nov., 1656, by special license
from Cromwell, stage plays (rudimentary opera) were given
here. The Siege of Rhodes was acted, Mrs. Coleman taking the
leading woman's part. In 1743 (George II) an Act of Parlia-
ment gave the control of the square to a body of trustees, the
* Lord Latimer's house seems to have stood on the site now
occupied approximately by Nos. 10, 11.
307
308 APPENDIX A
freehold remaining the property of the Governors of Charter-
house.
In about 1588 one Syncleer, caretaker of Philip Arundel's
tennis court in Howard House, set up a bowling green in the
west side of the square, to the great annoyance of the residents.
It attracted bad characters, who on one occasion pillaged the
home of the Lord Chief Justice, Sir Christopher Wray, in the
square.
Thackeray at one period of his schooldays lodged with a
Mrs. Boyes in the square, at No. 9. John Leech's schoolhouse
was No. 14.
CHARTERHOUSE
1. THE GATEHOUSE. — On the site of the Monastery Gate-
house, which was a simple arch with a timbered storey and
gable above. It was rebuilt in the sixteenth century, and was
then both longer and deeper than now. Repaired in 1613.
Again in the eighteenth century. The side-door added in
1835. The arch and the table supported by lions belong to
the Norfolk period, and the oak gate probably belongs to the
last days of the Monastery. There is a tradition that the gates
once hung in the brick arch opposite the entrance, which they
exactly fit. The actual oak gate was once deeper by some
two feet, which were removed as the soil was raised.
2. ENTRANCE COURT. — Looking from the Porter's Lodge
the brick arch on the left is probably the work of William
Tynbygh, Prior 1499-1529. On the right is the front of
Howard House (North and Norfolk, 1545-1572). The upper
floor is occupied by " the Long Gallery " (see p. 136). At the
juncture of the red brick of the Registrar's House with the
stonework is to be seen the east wall of the external staircase
down which Secretary Barker led Ridolfi (see p. 137).
3. THE MASTER'S COURT. — The three sides of the Court, now
the Registrar's (west) and Master's Houses (east), belong to
Howard House. Opposite to the visitor is the Great Hall.
The Court occupies approximately the site of the little cloister
with its guest houses as it was placed in the later monastic days,
having apparently been pushed out towards the south from its
earlier position. The beautiful old stonework is concealed
beneath a facing of modern buff brick. The door at the north-
east corner leading to Chapel dates from 1841, up to which
time a door and raised steps beneath the great staircase window
gave access to that portion of the buildings.
4. CHAPEL COURT. — The lobby, which perhaps represents
the site of the Priory quarters in the later Monastery, at the
APPENDIX A 309
north-east corner of Master's Court has a door to the right
which leads to Chapel Court, now the yard of the Master's
House. A locked door on the left in the Court leads to a
passage in which are seen the buttresses of the monastic church,
together with a doorway, now walled up, which was the entrance
door of the lay brothers, who passed from their quarters in
Washhouse Court through a " slype " (passage) across what is
now the Master's dining-room, and across the Chapel Court
(see later Master's Lodge). The entrance for the monks was
on the other side of the Chapel, opening out of the Great
Cloister.
5. CHAPEL CLOISTER (so called). — The six glazed arches
looking out on Chapel Court were built in 1613, but the two
central arches were not glazed and enclosed till about 1842.
In the cloister are memorial tablets to Thackeray and Leech,
Sir Henry Havelock, John Wesley, Roger Williams (founder of
Rhode Island Colony), John Hullah and other memorable
Carthusians. Richard J. S, Stevens (died 1837), once organist,
the author of well-known English glees, is buried here. On the
left a door leads to Brooke Hall, once the officials' common
room, which takes its name from Robert Brooke, headmaster
1628. He was expelled by Parliament in 1643 for his Royalist
tendencies, and after the Restoration was allowed to return to
free quarters here.
6. THE CHAPEL. — The Ante-Chapel has the date 1512,
showing that it belongs to the Priorate of William Tynbygh.
The original monks' church is confined to the present south
aisle, opening from the Ante-Chapel. The lower portions of
the south and east walls behind the wainscot are the original
church, founded in 1349, and adopted as the Carthusian Church
in 1371. In the wall to the right of the communion table is a
movable panel which covers an aumbry belonging to the
original church, which followed the plan of nearly all Carthusian
churches, being divided by a screen into two portions for the
fathers or monks, twenty-four in number, and for the twelve
lay brothers. This screen was placed at about the position of
the preacher's seat, the entrance for the lay brothers being still
visible in the external wall of the church. According to the
Carthusian custom, the fathers and the lay brothers were
separated, both in church and in the refectories.
The tomb of Sir Walter Manny, the founder of the monastery
(see p. 19), was, as we learn from a manuscript in the Record
Office, at the foot of the step of the high altar.*
" The Chapter-house was to the east of the church. The
sacristy to the north (on the site of the present north aisle). We
read also of a chapel of St. Anne, built 1405, at the west end, so that
310 APPENDIX A
The open arches resting on columns on the north of the
monastic church belong to the date of Button's executors, who
removed the wall and erected these arches and built also the
north aisle, or bay, for the reception of the Founder's Tomb,
finished in 1615. This aisle was originally lighted only from
the north, the east window being inserted in 1841. Nicholas
Stone was responsible for the " pictures " — i.e. the coloured
sculpture ; while Bernard Jansen, son of Nicholas Jansen of
Southwark, and probably brother of that Geraert Jansen who
is thought to have made Shakespeare's bust at Stratford, did
the architectural details. The tomb is minutely described in
the bill preserved in the Muniment Room. We learn from it
that the figures in the upper part are the three Virtues with
two children's figures typifying Labour and Rest.* The bas-
relief is not specifically explained, but plainly it represents the
Brothers assembled in their chapel. The two " captains " as
they are described (not Law and Sutton, the executors, as has
been asserted), who support the inscription, are an allusion to
Sutton's profession. The founder lies beneath, a full-length
effigy.
The iron grille is of much earlier date, and may possibly
have belonged to one of the many tombs which had existed in
the chapel or cloister. The Founder's body still lies in the
vault below.
The half-length figure of John Law, Sutton's executor (died
1614), now placed very high up on the west wall of the south
aisle, is also by Nicholas Stone.
In the pavement near the Founder's Tomb is the grave-
stone of Thomas Walker, Headmaster 1G79-1728, who had
Addison, Steele, and Wesley for his pupils.
The pulpit, joint work of Francis Blunt, Thomas Herring,
and Jeremy Wincle, is of 1G13. James Ryder (1613) carved
twenty-four of the wooden pewheads (some modern additions
are easy to detect). The communion table and the organ
screen are also of the date of Sutton's executors. But the
gallery (1841) of the northern bay (1824), the screen (1841),
and doors between the Ante-Chapel and Chapel, and the
women could hear Masses there without entering the monastery
(Record Office MS.). Other chapels dedicated to the Virgin and
All Saints, the Holy Trinity, St. Peter and St. Paul, St. Mary
Magdalene, St. John Evangelist, St. Agnes, St. John Baptist,
St. Jerome and St. Bernard, St. Michael, were built around the
church in the late fourteenth century and fifteenth century, it being
the rule for every father to celebrate Mass daily.
* Two figures are not accounted for. They are thought to
symbolise Plenty and Want, or Riches and Poverty, the left-hand
figure holding a cornucopia, while the right-hand figure bears two
birds, presumably the pair of turtle doves, the offering of the poor.
APPENDIX A 311
panelling of the south aisle are modern, except the portion of
panel close to the entrance.
The tombs in the chapel were raised to their present
position by Edward Blore (1841). They include the monument
of Matthew Raine, Master (died 1811), by Flaxman ; of Lord
Chief Justice Ellenborough (died 1818), by Chantrey ; of
Francis Beaumont, Master 1617-24, and of others. Near the
vestry is preserved a fragment of the Tomb of Sir Walter de
Manny (died 1372), found some years ago built into the wall of
Howard House. The organ screen stood across the south aisle
till 1841 when a large organ by Walker required more space.
When the school was in London the Foundation boys (Gown-
boys) sat in the seats which remain in front of the Founder's
Tomb. Their four monitors and four next boys of the house,
sat to the left and right (looking west) of the column. The
day-boys sat in the seats due west of the Founder's Tomb.
The rest of the school occupied the northern bay (1824), where
their seats still remain. The headmaster sat in a canopied pew
(now removed) to the left of the communion rails ; the usher
in a similar pew on the right. Above the Ante-Chapel is the
Muniment Room, which perhaps formed the Stranger's Gallery
of the monastic church, being then accessible from the spiral
staircase at the north-east corner of the " Chapel Cloister " (so
called). If this conjecture is sound there must have been an
opening now closed in the east wall of the Muniment Room to
give a view of the High Altar. Above the Muniment Room
and approached by the same spiral staircase is a large chamber
with a sixteenth century chimney in it, used evidently as a
living-room. All these three stages of the tower are of the
date of Prior Tynbygh's priorate, 1512. In the Belfry above
hangs, in the " Lover " * of 1613, the great bell, re-cast in
1631, by John Bartlett, from the earlier monastery bell which
had been " solemnly hallowed with chant " by Dan Richard
Fleming, Bishop of Lincoln, on July 18, 1428.
7. THE GREAT STAIRCASE seems, by Barker's confession, to
have been new here in 1571, and may therefore be accepted as
the work of the Duke of Norfolk.
8. THE TERRACE. — A paved walk, resting on the arcade
built with it by the Duke of Norfolk, 1565-71, as a double
" ambulatory " to his tennis court. The wall, visible from the
houses on the left, has on the upper portion of the brickwork
1571 (the last figure conjecturally restored). The Terrace
overlooks the site of the great cloister of the monastery,
* This bell still tolls the curfew at 8 p.m. in winter and 9 p.m.
in summer. The number of strokes corresponds to that of the Brothers
within the hospital.
312 APPENDIX A
afterwards the Duke's garden, then the " Upper Green " or
match-ground of the school, and now the Merchant Taylors'
playground. The open space within the cloisters was about
100 yards square. The twenty-four cells (cottages) were
arranged round the three sides and part also of the south side
to the east of the church. In the centre stood the conduit.
The block of buildings on the north and beyond stands upon
the site of the Monks' Wilderness, afterwards the " Under
Green" of the school. The Great School ("Big School")
stood on the north side of the present open space where the
ground rises and forms " Hill."
9. THE OFFICERS' LIBRARY was originally part of the
Great Chamber beyond, and was not separated from it till
1784,* when Daniel Wray, the antiquarian, a Carthusian, had
bequeathed his collection of books to the hospital. At the
same time the east wall was moved several feet into the lobby.
The portrait of Wray over the mantelpiece is by Nathaniel
Dance.* The Chippendale chairs are of high quality.
10. THE GREAT CHAMBER, also called the " Governor's
Room " and the " Tapestry Room," was almost certainly
added by North or Norfolk. There was originally no west
window, and the room at that end was lighted from the ad-
joining bay. When, between 1824-39, the new houses were
built at the end of the bay, the lower mullions and most of the
lights of the blocked-up window of the bay were used again
for the west window.
The fireplace belongs to the Howard House period, though
it cannot certainly be said under which owner ; but the panels
with Sutton's Arms and initials are a later insertion, as also are
the Royal Arms with C.R. The tapestries (Flemish) were
probably placed here by Norfolk. The fine ceiling of Norfolk's
date was admirably repaired under Archdeacon Hale, 1841.
In this room James I in May, 1903, created one hundred and
thirty-three knights. Up to the year 1872, the annual Latin
oration was delivered here by the head Gownboy.
11. In the passage beyond is the DUCHESS' WITHDRAWING
ROOM, more probably the Musicians' Room. This, since 1613,
has been the private room of the organist. It contains an
interesting collection of prints and drawings connected with
Charterhouse. It was in this room that John Wesley must
have paid the visits to Dr. Pepusch recorded in his diary. It
has a door opening to the musicians' gallery.
12. Beyond is the DUKE'S PRIVIE CHAMBER, now completely
gutted, and retaining no trace of antiquity. It was here,
* Smythe attributes it to Powell after Dance.
APPENDIX A 813
however, that " under the matte hard by the windowe's syde in
the Entrye towards my Lord's Bedchamber where the Mappe
of England doth hang whereof I made my Lord Pryvie " (see
Higford's Confession in Burghley's State Papers), the letter
from the " Quene of Scots " was found.
The staircase on the left of the door of this room is the only
remaining external staircase (there were once seven) of Howard
House.
13. THE GREAT HALL. — The lower portion of this hall
belongs to the date of Prior Tynbygh's (1499-1529) rebuilding.
As far up as to a point about 2 feet above the traceried windows
the work is of the last years of the monastery. It is safe to
conclude that the roof was raised by North or (more probably
Norfolk, who added the upper tier of square-headed windows.
The position of the adapted hammer beams, which are not
placed symmetrically with regard to the lower windows,
suggests that a makeshift was adopted. The Duke of Norfolk
probably threw out the oriel bay (which was taken down and
shortened in the nineteenth century). In the soffit of the
inside of the oriel arch, invisible save by the aid of a ladder, is
the motto " Think and Thank." Norfolk inserted the great
screen of the singing gallery which has upon the shield T.N.
1571, showing that it belongs to the time when Norfolk had
returned to Howard House after his first imprisonment in the
Tower. The coved gangway running from east to west, in the
opinion of the writer, is a few years earlier than the screen, as
may be judged from the very clumsy plan by which the singing
gallery is united to it, and by the fact that the frieze and two
corbels on the right of the gallery have been shifted to the
left so that the corbels no longer rest upon the capitals below,
a method which could never have been adopted in an original
design. The upper portions of the fireplace, the Arms of
Sutton, and the cannon are the work of Jeremy Wincle, 1613.
The lower part of the fireplace is, in the writer's opinion, of
somewhat earlier date.* The ceiling seems to be of the date of
the raising of the roof, as an examination of the rafters above
shows that they would have been unsightly and unpresentable.
But the ribs and panels were added to the plain ceiling by
Blore (1841). The old stone paving of the Hall was changed to
the present wood floor at the same time. The panelling of the
Hall is perhaps of the date of Prior Tynbygh. The Great Hall
was originally separated completely f from the Small Hall
* The heraldic animal in the centre, often called a salamander,
is more probably a Tudor griffin.
t This is the writer's opinion, which contradicts the view which
has gained ground only in the last forty years that the Great Hall
was the Guests' Refectory.
314 APPENDIX A
(Brothers' Library) adjoining. But Sutton's executors cut the
two apertures which are now seen, throwing the two rooms
together. These apertures were again closed by doors in
Archdeacon Bale's time. The Brothers dine daily in the
Great Hall.
14. THE BROTHERS' LIBRARY presents a good many diffi-
culties. It appears to occupy the site of the Prior's cell, and
the Freytor (Refectory) of the monastery as indicated in the
plan of 1431. Subsequently, under Prior Tynbygh, the Priors'
room seems to have been moved to a point nearer to the chapel,
probably where the open lobby is now seen, and it is probable,
but can only be stated with reserve, that the Lay Brothers'
Refectory occupied this position, the Monks' Refectory,
on a larger scale, being moved to the position of the Great
Hall. The portion, however, nearest to the east, from a
mark cut on the north wall near the door at the north-east
corner to the east wall, was originally part of the cloister
ambulatory, and was included in the room by North or Norfolk.
In any case the room must have been remodelled when the
great chamber above was added. The door north-east and the
fireplace are of the date 1613. Three of the stools are perhaps
of late monastic date, and two of the tables are perhaps two
out of the three which, in Dale's report (see Appendix B) are
said to have been left in the Refectory. The room was used
afterwards as Gownboy Dining Hall.
Underneath the Library, and extending about as far east-
wards as the mark aforesaid, is a cellar (not shown) with some
ancient features of monastic date.
15. The north-east door leads into the covered arcade
known as the cloisters, built by the Duke of Norfolk in the site
of the west ambulatory of the GREAT CLOISTER, of which the
lower part of the inner wall remains. A door of one of the
cottages (cells), with its hatch for the reception of the food,
remains, and appears to be Cell B (in the monastery plan),
founded in 1371 by Sir William Walworth (see pp. 57, 74).
Another hatch, 50 feet to the north, is apparently that of
Cell C, founded by Adam Fraunceys. On the east side of the
playground, under a plane tree, is to be seen the door of another
cell (apparently Cell T, founded by Sir William Ufford), now
half buried behind a bank and steps. Another door in good
preservation, and with some of the internal portion of the cell
remaining, was visible up to 1872, but disappeared at the
building of Merchant Taylors' Hall above it.
16. THE LAVENDRY COURT or WASHHOUSE COURT (also
once called Poplar Tree Court). The west wing of this court
was formerly prolonged towards the north some way into
APPENDIX A 815
Pensioners' Court (see plan of 1755). Washhouse Court is
probably part of Tynbygh's remodelling of this part of the
monastery, and was built to accommodate the lay brothers,
whose dormitories were on the upper floor, while their
" Obediences " — i.e. serving offices, were below. We read of
a lavendry or washhouse (the washhouse of the earlier monastery
was to the east of the Chapter-house, opening out of the Great
Cloister), a long workhouse * (west wing), a brewhouse (with a
water supply from the great conduit), a kitchen, a bakehouse,
and a fish hall. The court has been often repaired, but a good
deal of old work remains. The porch leading into the kitchen
on the north-east is, however, modern, of the mastership of
Dr. Currey. The passage leading from the Preacher's Court
into Washhouse Court is that spoken of in Barker's Confession
(see p. 137). The passage into the Master's Court has on the
north a portion of the MONKS' KITCHEN, perhaps built by
Tynbygh, and adapted by North, but all the rest of the kitchen
has been modernised. The name by which it is known, " The
Prior's Kitchen," is, of course, fanciful, there being no such
distinction between Prior and Monks in a Carthusian monastery.
On the outer wall of the west wing, in Preacher's Court, is
to be seen a bricked-up low archway which, in an old plan of
1614, corresponds with a " Slype " from the court. It has been
suggested by the Preacher f that this arch was formerly an open
hatch at which the broken meats from the kitchen were dis-
tributed to the poor. Above it is a cross, while still higher to
the left are the letters I.H. (probably a portion of I.H.S. rather
than John Houghton), and there are three crosses in all.
17. THE MASTER'S LODGE occupies the east wing and half
the south wing of the mansion of Howard House. The lower
rooms of the house, which include the dining-room and study,
were, before Archdeacon Hale's mastership, not used as
dwelling-rooms, but were the offices of the Houses, according
to the custom by which the upper rooms only — the Piano
Nobile — of a Renaissance mansion were used by the family.
Across what is now the Dining Room ran a slype or passage by
which, in monastic days, the lay brothers had passed from
Washhouse Court to their entrance to the Chapel. The Great
Staircase is modern, added by Archdeacon Hale. It leads to
the landing on the first floor which once formed the east
extremity of the " Long Gallery," which is now divided off by
partitions into the rooms of the Master's and Registrar's
* This room, partitioned, is still used for its original purpose,
but the brewhouse, the bakehouse, and the fish hall are no longer
so described.
t The Rev. H. V. Le Bas, to whom the writer owes much.
316 APPENDIX A
houses. For the part which this Long Gallery played in the
history of Elizabeth's day the reader is referred to Chapter
XIII. The east wing of the first floor is occupied by the small
Drawing Room, the large Drawing Room, and "the Panelled
Room." These rooms probably were the sleeping apartments
used by Elizabeth and James I at their visits to Charterhouse.
The large Drawing Room has a fine fireplace, probably of
Norfolk's period. The centre panel is not original, and the
portrait of Sutton which it contains — a late copy from the
portrait in the Great Hall — was formerly over the fireplace of
the small Drawing Room, where the portrait of Daniel Wray
is now seen.
There is a tradition that some of the pictures now in the
Master's Lodge were left here by Anne, the wife of James
Duke of Monmouth, and they have been commonly called the
Monmouth pictures. It is, of course, obvious that that belief, if
sound, could apply at most to five or six of the portraits, since
most of the others cannot be brought into line with the tradition,
either by reason of unfitness of date or of political party. The
fact that every portrait in the Lodge, except that of Daniel
Wray and Matthew Raine, is of a Governor of Charterhouse,
also induces reserve. The pictures, though interesting, are,
with one or two exceptions, especially Kneller's portrait of
Burnet, not of the very first order, and one or two have suffered
badly at the hands of the restorer. The list of portraits is as
follows : —
Thomas Sutton, an eighteenth century version of the
portrait (painted in 1657) in Great Hall.
Thomas Sutton, an oval in the chief fireplace. A repro-
duction from the portrait in the Hall.
King Charles II (c. 1660).
Gilbert Sheldon (Governor, 1661), Archbishop of Canter-
bury.
George Morley (c. 1663), Bishop of Winchester.
Humphrey Henchman (c. 1667), Bishop of London.
Benjamin Laney (c. 1668), Bishop of Ely.
William Craven, Earl of Craven (c. 1668).
George Villiers, second Duke of Buckingham (c. 1669).
Antony Astley Cooper, Earl of Shaftesbury (c. 1672),
attributed to Greenfield.
James Scott, Duke of Monmouth (c. 1679), attributed to
Sir Peter Lely.
Thomas Burnet, Master (c. 1685), by Sir Godfrey Kneller.
Signed 1694.
John Sheffield, Duke of Buckinghamshire (c. 1685).
Charles Talbot, Duke of Shrewsbury (c. 1689), attributed to
Sir Peter Lely.
APPENDIX A 317
John Somers, Earl Somers (c. 1694).
William Cowper, first Earl Cowper, Lord Chancellor (c. 1707).
John Robinson, Bishop of London (c. 1713), by Michael
Dahl.
John King, D.D., Master (c. 1715).
Edmund Gibson, Bishop of London (c. 1723), by Richardson.
Spencer Compton, Earl of Wilmington (c. 1732).
Daniel Wray, Benefactor, 1785, by Powell.
Matthew Raine, Schoolmaster, 1790, by Sir Thomas
Lawrence.
Charles Manners Sutton, Archbishop of Canterbury (c. 1805).
Copy by G. R. Ward after the portrait by Sir Thomas Lawrence
at Lambeth.
Arthur Duke of Wellington (c. 1828), by G. R. Ward.
William Hale Hale, Archdeacon of London. Master
(c. 1840).
18. THE PREACHER'S COURT is occupied by the rooms of
the brothers and by the Preacher's House. Up to the time of
Archdeacon Hale, the brothers occupied the old monastery
barns and outbuildings which, having been provided with
floors, chimneys, and staircases, had for 200 years done service
as quarters. The buildings stretched diagonally across from
north-east to south-west of the Preacher's Court. The two
courts which we now see were built between 1826-39. The
inner court is called Pensioners' Court. The fishpond of the
monastery lay where the north wing of Pensioners' Court now
stands, extending over a portion also of the old Brothers'
burial ground. The Brothers or Pensioners now live as in a
college of Oxford or Cambridge, on staircases, each having his
separate room or rooms. On the left-hand side of Preacher's
Court, Staircase No. 16, is the following inscription : —
IN THIS ROOM LIVED
CAPTAIN THOMAS LIGHT
WHOM THACKERAY VISITED
WHEN WRITING THE LAST
CHAPTERS OF THE NEWCOMES.
APPENDIX B
DOCUMENTS RELATING TO THE MONASTERY
Will of Sir WALTER LORD OF MANNEY, Knight. London,
St. Andrew's Day, 1371. [Nicolas. Testamenta Vetusta.]
My body to be buried at God's pleasure but if it may be in
the midst of the Quire of the Carthusians called Our Lady near
West Smithfield in the suburbs of London of my foundation
but without any great pomp. And I will that my executors
cause 20 masses to be said for my soul and that every poor
person coming to my funeral shall have a penny to pray for me
and for the remission of my sins. • To Mary my sister a nun X
pounds [Harleian MS. 6148 omits this. Dugdale, vol. ii, p. 150
gives it].
To my 2 bastard daughters nuns viz to Mailosel and
Malplesant the one CC franks the other C franks to Cishbert
my cousin [Dugdale omits] to Margaret Mareschall [Margaret
daughter of Thomas de Brotherton Earl Marshal] my dear
wife my plate which I bought of Robert Francis : also a
girdle of gold and a hook for a mantle and likewise a
garter of gold [the KC's Garter] with all my girdles knives
all my beds and dossers in my wardrobe except my folding
bed paly of blue and red * which I bequeath to my daughter
of Pembroke [Anne Plantagenet f wife of John Hastings
Earl of Pembroke] and I will also that my said wife have all
the goods which I purchased of Lord Segrave and the Countess
Marshal. Also I will that a tomb of alabaster with my image
as a Knight and my arms thereon shall be made for me like
unto that of Sir John Beauchamp in London. I will that
prayers be said for me and for Alice de Henalt J Countess
Marshal. And whereas the King oweth me an old debt of
1000 pounds by bills of his wardrobe I will that if it can be
* The arms of Manney.
t See list of founders of cells in the monastery, p. 71.
j Alice de Henalt, believed to be Alys de Halys, first wife of
Thomas Earl of Norfolk, his wife's mother.
318
APPENDIX B 319
obtained it shall be given to the Prior and Monks of the Charter-
house and whereas there is due to me from the Prince from the
time he has been Prince of Wales the sum of C marks per
annum for my salary as Governor of Hardelagh [Harlech]
Castle, I bequeath one half of these to the Monks and Prior
of the Charterhouse before mentioned and the other half to
the executors of my will. To my wife and my daughter Pem-
broke the fifteen m florins of gold and five " vesseux estutes
pli " [sic.] which Duke Albert oweth me by obligation. To
Sir Guy Bryan * Knight my best chains whom I also appoint
my executor.
II
Abstract of the Will of Michael [de Northburgh] unworthy
minister of the Church in London. May 23, 1361. [R. R.
Sharpe, Calendar of London Wills.]
A copy of full will exists in Charterhouse Muniment Room.
He leaves many bequests. Money for portions to poor girls :
for poor householders more especially for bondsmen nativis
of the Bishop of London. 100£ to maintain poore scholars
in Canon and Civil law at Oxford for 4 years and 20£ to the
Master to Chamber of London 10£ and a similar sum for the
repair of roads in Essex. To Michael Fre his books on civil
law and his magnum opus a concordance of law and canons :
also an entire suit of armour, a missal without music a small
bible : 3 silver dishes, salts, a Byker called " Katherine " an
amice, cope etc.
To Thomas, brother of the *aid Michael, to each of his
servants, to Richard de Ambraslee, to John de Cauntebrigg
fishmonger and others he leaves sums of money and household
goods : and to his successor his best mitre and pontifical ring.
He further leaves the sum of 2000£ for the foundation of a
House according to the ritual of the Carthusian Order in a place
commonly called " Neuchurche hawe " where there is a church
of the Annunciation of the B.V Mary which place and patronage
he acquired from Sir Walter de Manny ; and he leaves to the
said House when complete the divers basins f for use at the
high altar a silver vessel enamelled for Containing the Host :
his best silver stoup (meliorem stopam) for the Holy Water
with sprinkler, silver bell etc as well as all his rents and tene-
ments in London.
The will, with a fragment of seal attached, is preserved among
the Archives of St. Paul's Cathedral.
* Guy de Brienne — buried in Tewkesbury Abbey,
t These seem to be the vessels described in the inventory made
at the Suppression. See Appendix B, iv.
320 APPENDIX B
III
Extracts from MS. in the Record Office, Chartularies of Charter-
house 61.
[This MS., compiled apparently by a Carthusian Monk soon
after 1481 (the last date recorded in the MS.), gives a complete
account of the foundation of the monastery and a list of bene-
factions up to the date of compilation. It evidently belonged
to the Archives of the Monastery. It is referred to hi this book
as M.S.M.I. = i.e. MS. Monachi Ignoti.]
" He, [Northburgh] approached the aforesaid Lord Mawny
being minded to found in the said cemetery of New Burial
a House of the Carthusian Order earnestly praying him that
he would consent to have him as an associate and helper for
the said work. At length they agreed that the Bishop should
give Lord Mawny 1000 marks so that he should become his
associate and after the same lord the first founder of the House
and his sucessors the bishops of London perpetual patrons of
the same House which sum he paid with speed to the said
lord : and they thereon made indentures of which one written
in French and confirmed with the seal of the bishop is left
with us [i.e. Charterhouse] the effect of which is here clearly
set forth in Latin.
" In the name of JESUS, amen. This is the agreement
made between the Reverend father in God Dan Michael of
Northbury by the grace of God Bishop of London and Sir W.
Mawny Lord of Mawny and it is in this sort — that the said
W received the said Lord Bishop as his first associate after
himself for the foundation and advowson and building of the
Church of the Annunciation of our Lady outside London beside
Smithfield which was begun to be built on the day of the
Annunciation of our Lady in the year of grace 1349 according to
English use to build there a perpetual Carthusian Convent
of thirteen priests of that Order if it can well be done and if
not of another Order according as they may agree or in a smaller
number to remain for all time to celebrate and say daily for
their two selves aforesaid and for Dame Margaret Marchall
lady of Mawny wife of the said William [WALTER] and for their
children and successors of this blood and for the souls of all
their ancestors of whom they have come as well as for those
who belong to the foresaid Bishop, and for all parents friends
and benefactors of both and for those living and dead for
whom both are bound to pray or make prayers and especially
for the souls of all whose bodies are or shall be buried there.
" And it was agreed that while the said Michael and Walter
are alive the aforesaid Walter during his life time ought to be
APPENDIX B 321
the first founder patron and advocate and the aforesaid Michael
the Bishop his next associate as aforesaid.
******
' And after the death of the said Walter the said Dan
Michael of Northbury ought to have the patronage and advow-
son for all time and also that neither Margery Mareschall wife
of the said Walter nor their children nor their heirs nor any
other through them shall be able to claim any share in the
patronage or advowson of the said church save this that they
shall be first after the said Walter and the Bishop in all masses
memorials prayers orisons and hours.
******
" Dated at London the 9th of May in the year of Grace
1361."
IV
Other Benefactions to the Monastery through Gifts and
Bequests.
The Founders of Cells in the Great Cloister, viz. Sir Walter
de Manny : Sir William Walworth : Adam Fraunceys : Lady
Mary de St. Pol (countess of Pembroke) : Thomas Aubrey
and his wife Alicia (or Felicia) : Margaret wife of Frederic
Tilney (or Thymelby) : Sir Robert Knolles and Dame Constance
his wife : Dan John Bokingham, Bishop of Lincoln : Dan
Thomas Hatfield, Bishop of Durham : Sir William Ufford,
Earl of Suffolk : Dan Richard Clyderhow, Esquire, Armiger :
John Clyderhow, Clerk : William Symmes : Dame Joanna,
widow of William Brenche (Brenchly), Knight : Dame Margery
Nerford and Christina Ypstones her maid [ail these cells were
founded under the usual condition of perpetual prayers for the
souls of the founders and of others named by them. The
same conditions apply in almost all cases to benefactions
(a) by indenture in the lifetime of the benefactor and (b) to
bequests under Wills].
1431. William Symmes and Ann Tatersall gave the great
conduit.
1436. John Clyderhow gave the Little Cloister and the chapel
of St. Mary Magdalene in it.
1453. Sir John Popham, Royal Treasurer, Chancellor of
Maine and Anjou, gave the chapel dedicated to
St. Michael and St. John Baptist, and the little
chapel to the east of it dedicated to St. Jerome
and St. Bernard the abbot, and endowed them with
the Manor of Rolleston.
322 APPENDIX B
1475. William Freeman, sometime clerk of St. John of
Jerusalem, gave the Chapel of St. Agnes in the north
side of the church.
1481. Robert Hislett gave the altar and chapel in the
Cemetery (Charterhouse Square) dedicated to the
Blessed and ever Virgin Mary and all the Saints
(M.S.M.L).
Richard II, by Charter under the great seal, granted the
advowson of the Church of Edlesburgh and leave to appropriate
the same ; the monks being bound that one of the brethren
specially celebrate and pray for the souls of Richard II : Lady
Ann, Queen : Lord Edward Prince of Wales (the Black Prince) :
the father of Lord Edward, Richard's Brother : the father
of Princess Joan : Edward III : and all the faithful departed.
M.S.M.I.
There also exist Indentures whereby the monks are bound
to offer prayer in return for benefactions : and between 40 and
50 wills are given by Sharpe, in which bequests are made to
the Monastery. These bequests in some cases seem to include
the condition of burial within the precincts.
The following Monuments * of persons buried in the Church,
Chapels or Cloister are mentioned by Stow.
Sir Walter de Manny, Founder : [in the middle of the choir
in front of the High Altar ; a fragment is preserved in our
chapel].
Dame Margaret de Manny, wife of the Founder.
Sir William de Manny, brother of the Founder.
Marmaduke Lumley.
Sir Lawrence Bromley, Knight.
Sir Edward Hederset, Knight.
Dame Johan Borough.
Sir John Dorewent Water, Knight.
Katherine, daughter to Sir William Babington.
Blanch, daughter to Hugh Waterton.
Katherine, wife to John at Poole, daughter and heir to
Richard de Lacie.
William Rawiin.
Sir John Lenthaine, Knight (query Leynham ?) and Dame
Margaret, daughter of John Fray.
John Peake, Esq.
* The Priors and Monks are not mentioned. Their burial-ground
lay at the south-west corner of the Great Cloister.
APPENDIX B 323
William Baron and William Baron, Esquire.
Sir Thomas Thwaites, Knight.
Philip Morgan, Bishop of Ely, 1434.
In the cloystre Sir Bartholemew Rede, Knight. Mayor
of London, buried 1505.
Sir John Popham, Treasurer of England.
Sir Robert Rede d. 1519, Chief Justice of Court of Common
Pleas was buried in the Chapel of St. Catharine in the Church
of the Carthusians Charterhouse, where he had founded a
Chauntry with a salary of 8£ a year for 30 years. Indenture
dated July 18, 1517. Conventual Leases. London. No 138.
Sir John Heth was one of the Chauntry priests. Sir Robert
Rede was founder of the Rede lectures at Cambridge.
VI
List of the belongings of a Carthusian Monk of the London
Charterhouse at his transference to the Charterhouse
of Mount Grace, Jan. 1519-20, Record Office, State
Papers, Henry VIII, vol. iii, p. 606 ; given in vol. xviii,
Yorkshire Archceological Society.
Be yt Remembyrd that I Dane [Dan, Dom or Dominus]
Thomas Golwyne monke professyd of the howse of London
hadde w* me by the lycens of the honorable ffader Prior of the
sayd howse of London, Dan Wylliam Tynbegh : when I departyd
from London un to Mownte Grace All these things under
wrytten the XXV day of January in the yere of owre lorde
MLCCCCCXIX.
Imfirimis iij habyts as they come by cowrse.
Item ij newe stamyn shyrts and j olde.
Item ij newe stamyn colys [cowls] and j olde.
Item ij newe hodys and j olde.
Item a newe coote lynyde and an olde mantell.
Item a wyde sloppe furryd to put over all my gere of the
gyfte of my lady Convay.
Item a newe cappe and an olde.
Item a newe pylche [pelice, fur gown] of the gyft of Mr.
Saxby.
Item an olde pylche. And iij payer of hosen.
Item iij payer of newe sokks and ij payer of olde.
Item iij olde sylecs [hairshirts] and a lumbare.
Item a new payer of korkyd shone lynyd and j payer of
doble solyd shone.
Item a payer of blanketts and ij goode pylows and ij lytell
pylows and a kosshyn to knele on.
Item a newe mantell by the gyfte of Syr John Rawson
Knyght of the Roods.
324 APPENDIX B
Item a lytell brasyn morter w* a pestell gevyn by the
gyfte of a frende of myn.
Item ij pewter dysshes ij sawcers an a podynger and a lytell
sqware dysshe for butter.
Item a new chafyng dysshe of laten [plate-tin] gevyn to us
and ij newe tyne botylls gevyn by a kynsman of owrs.
Item a brasyn chafer that ys to hete in water.
Item a brasse panne of a galon gevyn to us lyke wyse.
Item a lytell brasyn skelett [skillet = bucket or pot] w*
a stele [handle].
Item a payer of new felt boots and ij payer of lynyd sleppers
for mateyns. Item a fayer laten sconse.
These boks drawen together by lyne be yn velome.
* Item a fayer wrytten yornall made by the cost of
Masters Saxby havynge a claspe of sylver and an ymage of
Seynt Jerom gravyn ther yn the seconde lef of advent begyn-
nyth Jerusalem alleluia this boke standyth in makynge
iij li.
Item a fayer written primer w* a Kalendar and many
other Rewls of oure religion theryn.
Item a fayer written sawter w* a fayer ymage of Seynt
Jerom theryn in the begynnynge the ij de lef of the sawter
begynnyth te : erudimini [i.e. from Psalm II, v. 10],
Item a large fayer boke wrytten wl the lessons of dirige
and the psalmys of buryinge and letany and Response theryn
notyd.
Item a boke wrytten conteyninge certeyn masses w* the
canon of the Masse and a kalendar in the begynnynge of
the boke w* a fayer ymag of Jhesu standyng befor.
Item a lytell penance boke wryttyn.
Item a wrytten of prayers of diverse saynts w* ymags
lymnyd and dirige wrytten theryn.
Item a wrytten boke of papyr w* divers storyes of ars moriendi
theryn.
Item a printed portews [portable breviary] by the gyft
of Mr. Rawson.
Item a yornall and a printyd primer gcvyn by Mr Parker.
Item a lytell legent aurey [perhaps Caxton's Golden Legend]
in printe.
Item a shepds kalendar in printe.
f Item Ysops fabylls [perhaps Caxton's Edition] in printe.
Item directorium aureum in printe.
* It is evident that this monk had for his handicrafts Weaving
and MS. writing.
t Caxton, Wynkyn-de-Worde, and Julian Notary, all printed
editions of the Golden Legeiid. Caxton printed an JVsop's Fables
with many woodcuts.
APPENDIX B 325
* Item a complete frame prto wefe wl Corsys [courses]
w* xix polysses [pulleys] of brasse and xix plummetts of lede
w* ij swordys of yron to worke w* in the frame.
* Item a dowbyll styll to make w* aqua vite that ys to say
a lymbeke w* a serpentyn closyd both yn oon.
The Statutes of the order of 1259, by Prior Guigo, set
forth that to each monk are to be given : —
" For writing a desk pens chalk 2 pumices 2 inkhorns a
penknife 2 razors or scrapers for scraping parchment, a pointer
an awl, a weight, a rule, a ruler for ruling, tables, a writing
style.
" But if a brother be of another craft which very rarely
happens amongst us, for almost all whom we receive, if it can
be done we teach to write [i.e. to transcribe MSS.] he has
suitable tools for his craft.
" And there are given to him 2 pots 2 plates a third for
bread and a lid for it. And there is a fourth somewhat bigger
for washing up. 2 spoons a knife for bread, a flagon, a cup,
an ewer, a salt, a pan, a towel, tinder for his fire fuel a strike-
a-light, wood, a chopper. But for works an axe."
VII
Original deed now in Charterhouse Museum, Godalming, once
a Phillips' MS. 14004. (A copy in French in Charterhouse
Muniment Room.) An agreement between John Ffereby
and Margery, his wife, on the one side, and the Prior of
Charterhouse on the other, for the conveyance of water
from Islington to the Great Cloister. The deed is wit-
nessed by Duke Humphrey. The plan of the water supply,
in three skins, now in Charterhouse Muniment Room,
London, evidently belonged to this deed.
" Johannes Ffereby (or Fferiby) Armiger et Margeria
Sponsa Ejus Et Prior [John Maplestede] et Conventus Domus
Salutationis Beat?e Marie de Ordine Cartusiensi Juxta Londinum.
Dec. 2 in ninth year of Henry VI [1430]."
The expenses of this supply, together with those of the build-
ing of the great Conduit in the middle of the Great Cloister,
were paid out of the goods of William Symmes and Anne
Tatersale. (M.S.M.I. under date 1431.)
* See note on previous page.
326 APPENDIX B
VIII
Record Office MS. abbreviated.
Richard Leighton
Thomas Leyghe
Francis Cave
Thomas Thacker
A declaration made the 22d day of
Merche 30th year of Henry VIII (1537)
by the said ComyssSners concerning
rr pi . i the Goodes and Chattalls of the late
Charterhouse in the County of
Middlesex by Richard Riche and others.
Date. Nov. 12. 30. Henry VIII.
The arreariyes owing to the said house.
Plate * delyvered to John Wyllyams [Sir John Williams]
400 and 47 ounces.
For a vestment also delivered] to the said John Wylliams
ornamented stuff of household vestments solde, 9. 16. 8.
End of all the chargas, 9. 16. 8.
Item for costes charges expenses rewards, 5. 16. 8.
And then Court debt, 3. 19. 0.
Memorandum The Prior must paye all rewards wages
liveries as well to the Monkes Convent and
servants of the revenue by him received.
Mem. The Bells lead and other edifices there
remain unsold and defaced.
A vestment of white velvet wythe an Angel of Gold
embroidered and set wythe pearls all which plate and ornaments
were delivered by order of my Lord Privy Seal [Thomas
Cromwell] to Thomas Thakestone to the use of our Sovereign
Lord the King.
The High Altar of the story of the Passion of boune [ivory]
wrought with small images curyoslye. At either ende of the
said altar an image the on [one] of St John Baptist the other
of St Peter and above the said Altar 8 tabernacles the nether
front of the altar of alablaster with the Trinitie and other
Images. On the south side of the same at the end of the Altar
a cupporde * painted with the picture of Christ. On the
north side of the Altar an Ambrey with a letter. In the same
Quere a lampe and a bason to beare waxe both of latten [plated
tin]. The Stalles of the said Quere on either side with a lectorn
undefaced.
St. John's Chapel in the south side of the Church. A
Chapel of St. John the evangelist and the other of St. Augustin
* This would have doubtless included the Holy Vessels left to
the church by Michael de Northburg. See Appendix B, ii.
APPENDIX B 327
at either end of the said Altar. Item the said Chapel is sealed
with oak wainscoat and other horde about three quarter's high.
The Body of the Church. The rood loft with an image
of Christ crucified and mounteyn. . . . The two alters on
either side of the Quere doore on the south side an altar wythe
a table [picture or sculpture] and the assumption of our ladye
gylte there remaynynge.
Chapel of S. Jerome * an alter table with a crucifix of
Mary and John two images at either ende of the Said alter
the one of Jrme (Jerome) the other of Saint Barnard partly
being sealed with wainscot. Item 2 seats and a lyttell coffer.
Item an alter of St Michael with a fair table [picture]
of the Crucifix Mary and John and at either ende of the alter
an image the one of Saint Michael the other of Saint John.
Mr. Rede's f Chapel an altar wythe a table of the Trinity
the 4 doctors of the Church the same chapel being seelyd
with wainscot and 2 Covers all remaynynge undefaced.
Item nyghe unto the said chapel a pewe with 2 seats of
wainscot.
The North side of the Quere.
An altar with a table of Saint Anne gylt with certain other
images gylt and painted item a table with an alter. A table
of St Anne and our Ladye with certen other images above the
Said Alter at either ende and an image with a tabernacle and
betwixt every one of the said Alters above wrytten there is a
partytyon of wainscot.
The West ende of the Churche. On the North side an
alter with a table in the myddes a Crucifix of Marye and
John fayre painted Item in the myddes of the said Ende a
partytyon of timber with pykes of iron above.
The Chapter House. An alter wythe a table of alablaster
with seven joies of our Ladye at the nether ende of the sayd
Chapter House a lytell Chapel of waynescote.
The Sexton Chamber [Sacristy].
A cheste wythe 3 lockes contayning all the evydence of
Adrian's Chauntrey. Item a nother plate Cheste withyn the
same bounden with iron. Item a messe boke with a Cubberde
and certeyn other bowkes with a large troughe of wood.
In the Fish Halle iiii olde tables 3 formes an olde painted
cloth.
In Egipte [alias the Fleshhouse in Charterhouse Square]
2 tables and 2 formes.
In the Frater certain tables and waynscote.
* St. Jerome, St. Barnard, St. Michael, St. John. These altars
and the figures of the saints are recorded in M.S.M.I., under date
1453.
t Rede. See Appendix B, v.
328 APPENDIX B
In the Cloyster a laver of decayed metall.
In the drynkynge place. 2 round tables, 3 forms a chayre a
clieste an andyron and an old picture.
In the Priors new cell * a pan and a furnesse.
In the Laundry a pan and a furnesse.
In the Brewhouse 2 brewing leadys : a mashing fatt withe
trough of lead 2 yelinge [sic] fattes. 26 Runnells with other old
tubbes.
In the Matte House.
A horse mylne with the appurtenances.
In the new Brewhouse.
A greate leade 3 greate fattes and other old tubbes.
In the Bakehouse, 3 moulding tubbes 2 trowes a brasspan.
In the Store House, 32 pipes of lead.
In Bowlting House, a beam of iron, 4 half hundred weight
of lead and a moulding table.
In the Fish Kitchen 4 cisterns of lead all in one a little
furness of Brass, a skyppinge borde and 2 hangynge shelves.
In the larder 8 shelves.
In the Butterye 12 tubbes greate and smalle cubbordys
with certeyn ole bordys and a long table.
Over and besides all the edificiones and byldynges of the
Church, Isles, Steple, Chapitoure house and Ffrayter as all
other celles and chambers with all the lead bells glass yron
gravestones tombes and pavinge stones which remayneth
undefaced untyl the Kinges pleasure be furder known except
certeyn Cellys which were defaced from the time of the dis-
solucyon over and besides certeyn stallys and seatys in the
bodye or vales [?] of the Churche whyche were solde as yrafter
is specified.
[To Lord Latimer [husband of Katherine Parr, see p. 307]
is due 30£ and he holds in pawn an olde myter and a cross.
Debt incurred by the predecessor of the Pryor.]
Item to Thomas Howey for money boroed of him by the
present Pryor for the use of the Pryor.
Total debts 53. 3. 4.
[Then follows an inventory of miscellaneous vestments,
napery, etc., from which the following extracts are taken.]
Baudykin, a Red velvet vestment.
An old dore, an old cloke, 7 seats and settles in the Body of
the churche, 2 feather beds, 2 bolsters, 2 blankets, an old
* This appears to have been situated near where now we see the
open space with columns, and a fireplace west of the so-called Chapel
Cloister. T believe it to have been the present Preacher's House
(1914).
APPENDIX B 329
coverlet, a standing table and chair, 17 napkins and table
cloths.
The Flesh Kitchen [this was otherwise called Egipte. It
was outside the Monastery in Charterhouse Churchyarde or
Square] 2 cordes.
Priors Cell.
6 silver spoons, a fatte of silver, other utensils belonging
to the Prior yeven to the Prior [Trafford] in reward and over
and above to every monk their bokes and stuff in their own
cells and to every monk a vestment with the appurtenances
and 6 vestments given to 6 parish Churches.
Payments made
John Grove and William Dale * kept the House for 12 weeks
30 shillings.
Paid to William Dale from dissolucyon to March 3rd
following 40 shillings.
Paid for 2 Sunday dinners for said commissioners their
clerks and servants, and making the inventory and executing
the King's affairs 26/8.
To Thomas Owen for keeping orchards gardens and cells
and board wages in gross 20/-.
Mownkes [so spelt],
To William Trafford 4£.
Edmund Sterne Treasurer 40/-.
Thomas Harman 40/-.
John Evyns 40/-.
Richard Tregore 40/-.
Wyllyam Merit 40/-.
Maurice Chauncey 40/-.
Bullen 40/-
Nicholsen 40/-.
Baker etc etc etc.
[The Conversi got 20/- each.]
To wages and liveries for servants 10/- wages +13/4 liveries.
Pensions. To the Prior no pension assigned but remitted
unto the King's highness his most honourable council And
the said House remains as yit was delivered to John Grove and
William Dale by the Commissioners until the King's pleasure
be further known.
[William Trafford signed the surrender June 12, Henry VIII
29th year. 1537.]
* This is the William Dale, the caretaker, whose report in the
Record Office is given in Appendix B, ix.
330 APPENDIX B
IX
Some Documents relating to the Distribution of the Effects
of the Charterhouse (State Papers Domestic 30 Henry
VIII ; - ). (From the original in the Public Record
olo/
Office.) *
" Received of William Daylle by the hands of William
Doone, at the commandment of Master Doctor Lee, Doctor
Layton and others, the 24th of November, 30th Henry VIII
(1538) for Master Doctor Lee, in the Church of the Charter-
house in London.
" First, seven pews for seats, a desk, and two panes of
plain panel that stood upon two chests.
" Item, delivered to the late PRIOR t of the said house, all
the wood given to the said late PRIOR by the King's Visitors,
which was sold for £15.
" Item, delivered to the King's Gardener coming to the
said Daylle in the King's name, for the King's Garden at
Chelsea, all such bays, Rosemary grafts, and other such like
things as was meet for his grace in the said garden, showing
unto the said Daylle the King's commission for the same.
" Item, delivered unto Master Richard Cromwell's gardeners,
all such bay trees and grafts as they thought convenient for
them.
" Item, delivered to Master Fitz Hugh, a whole cell of
wainscot as it stood, by Master Richard Cromwell's token,
which was a gold ring.
" Item, certain brethren took away (the fittings of) their
cells as they stood, by your mastership's J commandment as
they say.
" Item, all the Kitchen stuff, and buttery stuff, sold to
Doctor Cave is had away by Master Doctor Cave's servant as it
was preysed by the visitors.
" Item, Doctor Byllowse' servant had two cart load of hay
away, by commandment of the visitors.
" Item, delivered to Sir Arthur Darcy the custody of three
small cells adjoining to his house, which he had of my Lord
Privy Seal by Master Chancellor of the Augmentation's com-
mandment, upon a token from my Lord Privy Seal, and by the
said Master Lee's assent.
* The spelliog of this document is so strange and unintelligible
that it has been deemed advisable to modernise it. Dale was
completely illiterate.
t William Trafford.
i Thomas Cromwell.
APPENDIX B 331
" Item, delivered to Master Doctor Talbote the Custody
of the New Cell, by the Commissioner's commandment.
" Item, delivered to Master Wuddall, the custody of one
cell, by Master Doctor Lee's commandment and Master
Thacker's.
" Item, sold and delivered to Master Pickering, by Master
Doctor Cave's commandment, all the wheat and malt in the
house.
" Item, delivered to Master William Dune, for the use of
Master Doctor Lee, twelve elmen boards and quarters as many
as made the full of a load.
" Item, delivered to Dune, one grindstone.
" Item, delivered to the King's Gardener, the 22nd of
November, two loads of grafts.
" Item, delivered to the King's Gardener, the 25th of
November, one load of grass.
" Item, delivered to the cator of my Lord Privy Seal's
house, three baskets of herbs.
" Item, delivered to the King's gardener, the 23rd of
November, three loads of bay trees.
" Item, delivered to the King's gardeners, out of the orchard
of the Charterhouse, three trees, grafts of all sorts as doth
appear by the pits where they were taken, in all 91 trees.
" Item, sold and delivered to Master Doctor Cave, all the
Vinegar.
" Item, delivered to Master Semer and Master Smith on
St. Nicholas eve last, 200 Carps.
" Item, delivered to Fey's Mill pond to Doctor Lay ton,
100 Carps for the King's Store.
" Item, to Master Layton, twelve car load of timber, and
six car load of stones.
" Item, delivered to Master Brooke, all the New timber in
the Charterhouse Wood-yard bought for the Goodman of the
Splayed Eagle in Gratyus Street [Gracechurch].
" Item to the said Master Brooke, all the hay that Master
Doctor Bell has left behind him in the Charterhouse in London.
" Item, Master Doctor Layton's servant fetched away
four Merlin birds, and all things belonging thereto.
" Item, delivered to Master Layton, three boards in the
bakehouse, and other stuff thereto belonging.
" Item, delivered to Master Layton, a bundle of roses.
" Item, delivered to Master Hay don, Receiver of the
Charterhouse all the wainscot in the corner cell, the 23rd of
January.
" Item, delivered to the said Master Haydon, 22 new pipes
of lead, the said 23rd of January, by the commandment of the
Chancellor as he said.
332 APPENDIX B
" Item, the said Master Haydon has taken and laid up all
the timber and stones that he could find about the Charterhouse
which was necessary for the King's use.
" Item, delivered to the said Master Haydon, 22 cases of
glass, which were taken down by Owen and delivered to him
to keep in safe guard for fear of stealing.
" Item, delivered to William Myles, servant to my Lord
Privy Seal, the custody of the barber['s shop], and the cell
adjoining to it, by the commandment of Master Doctor Lee
and Master Layton the 28th January.
" Item, whereas he said that I the said Keeper should have
the charge of the Church, I never had, as it shall be proved,
for the truth is that Master Doctor Cave has had the Key of
the Church ever since the House was suppressed, and has it at
this day ; therefore, sir, it is nothing in my charges, and I
pray your good mastership to charge me not with all.
" Item, where they would charge me with seven cells next
to the Church, the truth is I never had the keeping of none of
the said seven cells, but one Gerard Haydon first after the
suppression of the house had the keeping of five of the said
cells, and the keeping of Sir Arthur Darcy's house. And after
that, Haydon entered the Earl of Angus to the said house and
five cells.
" And after the said earl, entered Sir Marmaduke Constable
to the said house and five cells, and (he) occupies them to this
day. And for the other two cells, one the same time has been
in the keeping of one Master Talbot since the suppression of
the said house, and is yet unto this day. Wherefore, I trust
your mastership, of your goodness, will not charge me with all
the keeping of the said seven cells.
" Item, so (there) remains in the keeping of William Daylle,
the 27th of February, by commandment of the Chancellor of
the Augmentations, twenty cells, certain lodgings, with a hall,
a kitchen, a buttery, a wine cellar, the old brewhouse with
ij ledys and mashefats ij yell fatts and xx Kymnells in the
same, three stables, the saw pit, the washing house, with one
place called the fij shall with four houses of horses (?) under
the same two chambers, and the cundeth [conduit], the new
brewhouse with a great leyd and iij fatts in the same, a horse
mill which is above the old brewhouse, with divers things
appertaining to the same.
" Item, delivered to the said Daylle, by the commandment
of the Chancellor of the Augmentations, the custody of all the
stuff remaining in the storehouse. And the master is com-
manded to deliver the said stuff to the said Daylle by bill
indented.
" Item, for the rest of the said cells, which is twenty, there
APPENDIX B 383
was one which was keeper with me, whose name was Thomas
Gromes, servant to Doctor Lee, which Thomas did sell unto
Gerard Haydon all the wainscot being hi one great cell for
£1 6s. 8d., of which sum the said Thomas and William have
received of the said Haydon 55., and so the rest of the said
money remains in the hands of the said Haydon.
" Item, there was one little Sir William (who) defaced and
took down all the new wainscot in a cell which was late(ly)
billeted to his own use as he intented. Notwithstanding the
truth is that one William Daylle and George Wudworth,
servants unto my Lord Privy Seal, found the said wainscot
where the said Sir William had laid it up ; and we took it away
from thence, and kept it to such time as we were imprisoned,
and then we were glad to sell it to keep us with.
" Item, the other two cells of the said twenty, which one
Master Canton did keep, which two cells are spoiled, but in
my conscience no fault in the said Canton, nor none of his folk,
for I never knew the said Canton nor none of his hurt the said
house nor the orchard at any time, but as an honest man and
true keeper ; and so did none but only Master Hurde and the
said Canton, keeper of the said orchard.
" Item, there was Master Few that brought me a gold ring
for a token from Master Richard Cromwell, commanding me
to deliver all the wainscot in one cell, as it stood to the said
Few, saying that token should be a discharge.
" Item, for the great clock, a gentleman called Master
Mins, bought it and paid for it ; and one Master Polsted did
send me, William Daylle a ring off his finger commanding me
to deliver the said clock, and I told him I could not come to it,
for Doctor Kew had the keys of the belfry ; and so his servant
delivered the said clock to Master Mins.
" Item, the said Haydon had laid up a house full of wainscot
within Sir Arthur D'arcy's house, whereof he then had keeping ;
and after (he) carried the same wainscot away.
" Item, the said Haydon gathered all the wood, timber,
and stone, lying abroad in the Charterhouse, to the King's use
as he said.
" Item, Thomas Owen found and took down 25 cases of
glass, delivering them to the said Haydon for the King's use.
" Item, Thomas Owen found and took away six cisterns of
lead, and delivered them to the said Haydon.
" Item, the said Thomas Owen has all the cocks of the
water remaining within the same house.
" Item, the same Thomas has one of the six tables of the
Frater.
" Item, Hilton in Chancery Lane has one of the said
tables.
3
334 APPENDIX B
" Item, one Davidson at Paul's Wharf has one of the
said tables, which he carried through the Earl of Angus'
house.
" Item, all the wainscot that doth lack within the Frater
was given to Master Sword-bearer of London, by Master
Thacker's token.
" Item, all the wainscot, lead and glass, with all other
things lacking within the three cells, in the keeping of Sir
Marmduke Constable, was clean gone before his coming to
them.
" Item, the wainscot lacking in the Prior's cell was four
pieces, which I delivered to Thomas Owen.
" Item, I have taken down as much glass as did make and
repair a dozen windows, as well within the porter's lodge as in
other places within the house. As for the rest of the glass of
the said house, I will depose upon a book, I never had nor
knew set to any use.
" Item, all the cocks and pipes wanting within the said
house were sold by Thomas Owen to divers persons, which
confesses the same ; and (they) were committed to his charge
only, for the which also he takes his wage.
" Item, to Sir Marmaduke Constable, one cock, one pipe.
To Master William Nevill, one cock, one pipe ... (in all
eight cocks and eight pipes).
" Item, the brethren of the house were licensed by the
visitors to take away such things as was meet for them, as
Thomas Owen and John Waner say, who took with them much
of the wainscot, as then did appear. Also Doctor Bells had
away the table and a pair of tressels, and the hangings, and a
paper called mappa mundi.
" Item, Master Doctor Layton's servant sent away the
new cupboard, and the bench, out of the drinking buttery.
" Item, Doctor Cave's servant sent away one round table
forth of the said buttery, and forth of the Prior's parlour
another round table.
" Item, the said visitors had all the rest of the said stuff
which was in the Church of the Charterhouse, that is to say,
chalices, vestments, with all other ornaments within the said
Church of the Charterhouse.
" Item, the said visitors did give away four great painted
tables, standing in every four corner of the Cloister of the said
Charterhouse.
" Item, the said visitors sent away all the beds in the
guest chambers.
" Item, the said visitors did give all the beds and books to
the brethren which dwelt in the said cells.
" (Some) of the said brethren took away, through the said
APPENDIX B 335
gifts, certain boards of wainscot, which defaced the cells very
sore within the said Charterhouse.
" Item, sir, I desire your good mastership, seeing that
Master Mildmay, the King's Auditor, has sworn me, William
Daylle, to show the truth of all the stuff being gone out of
the Charterhouse, therefore, sir, I desire your good mastership,
for the King's advantage and for your worship, to cause Gerard
Haydon and Brother Richard and Thomas Owen to be sworn
upon a book what things they have known go out of the Charter-
house by themselves and others ; and I doubt not it shall be
wholly for the King's advantage if they be true men.
" Also, Sir, I desire your mastership of your goodness to be
so good unto me (as) to speak some good word for me, being a
poor man which has kept the Charterhouse the space of a year
and a half, and was promised of the visitors eight pence a day.
" And I the said keeper had never penny therefor but
£3 6s. Sd. for the which I do lose the best yeoman's master in
this realm, the which I had of truly paid £5 and three liveries
by year.
" Therefore, sir, for the love of God, and in the way of
charity, having no master nor wages, and my wife lying sick
this twelvemonth on me, your mastership having the name
(of one) that takes pity of every poor man and woman ; where-
fore I trust ye will have pity on me, so I can say no more to your
good Mastership, but I put me in your will and mercy where
I have offended you here in this book, so He that bought you
save you and have you in His keeping at His pleasure at all
times. Written by me
" WILLIAM DAYLLE."
MS. preserved at Charterhouse. ADAMUS CARTHUSIENSIS.
Sermones Adami Cartusiensis et aliorum. Vita S. Hugonis
Episcopi. Lincolniensis Vita Ejusdem Ade, etc. Manuscript
on vellum 12 x8| in original monastic binding of massive boards
of oak covered with white deerskin and with the ancient
chased clasps attached to leather thongs. On the flyleaf the
inscription " Liber Domus Salutationis Matris Dei Ordinis
Carthusiensis prope London."
This MS., formerly in the library of the monastery, was
presented to Charterhouse by Bernard Alfred Quaritch, O.C.,
in 1613, a few months before his death.
Adam the Carthusian was earlier the Abbot of the Prae-
monstratensian Monastery of Dryburgh in Scotland, and
became a Carthusian monk of Witham. This MS. of fifteenth
386 APPENDIX B
century date was probably transcribed by a monk, either of
Charterhouse, Witham, or of London Charterhouse itself. The
evidence of the MS. shows that the opinion expressed in the
Dictionary of National Biography following earlier writers, that
Adam of Eynsham, and deacon of Lincoln, a friend of St.
Hugh, was the real author of this life of St. Hugh is erroneous.
APPENDIX C
DOCUMENTS RELATING TO CHARTERHOUSE IN
THE MANSION PERIOD, i.e. FROM THE DATE
OF THE SUPPRESSION TO THE DATE OF THE
SALE TO THOMAS SUTTON.
Record office. Augmentation Office Misc. Books, vol. 235.
Westminster June 12. June 34 Henry VIII. 1542.
[License to John Bridges and Thomas Hale of Charter-
house for the keeping therein of the King's nets, halls [or
hales, i.e. hunting nets] and pavilions.] Extract, the
abbreviations as in the original.
Rex omnibus ad quos etc Saltm. Scietis qd nos tarn p
bona et salva custodia et regarda tentorior halor et pavilionm
nror (sic) de tempore in tempus quarn p cunctis aliis causis nos
spialit movend de gra nra spiali ex eta scientia et mero motu
nris dedimus et concessimus ac p presentes damus et concedimus
diltis svientibz nris Johi Bridges valect halar et tentorior nror
et Thomae Hale gromet eordem Totum domum et scitum nup
domus sive Prioratus Carthusien ppe civitatem nram London
dissolut ac totam eccliam campanile cimiterm cellas claustra
cellaria solaria stabula ortos pomeria gardin a aquas stagna
vivaria aqueductus fontes et capita eordem ac omnia alia
domos aedificia tras utensilia et alias res quascunque cum ptin
tarn infra quam supra muros et pcint ejusdem nup domus sive
Prioratus existen.
******
Teste Rico Riche Milite apud Westm duo decimo die Junii
anno regni nri tricesimo quarto [1542].
II
Record office. Patent Roll No. 752. Westminster, 14 April.
36 Henry VIII, 1545. [Grant of Charterhouse to Sir
Edward North.]
337
338 APPENDIX C
EXTRACT
Omnibz ad quos etc saltm. Cum nos p Iras nras patent
sub magno sigillo nro
*******
dederim et concessm diltis svieutibus Johi Bridges . . . et
ThomseHale . . . [here follows the description of the Monastery
verbatim as in Appendix C, 1]. . . .
Scietis quod nos in consideracoe boni vi fidelis et acceptabilis
svicu dulcis consiliarii nri EDWARD NORTHE militis Cancellarii
die cur nre Augmentat etc etc Dedimus et concessimus ac
p presens damus et conced pfato Edwardo North reversioe et
reversiones domus et sit ac pdict eccli campanilis etc ac etiam
tot pdict domum et situm nup domus Carthus
Ac etiam totum cimitrm eidem situi adjacen vulgarit voc
The Charterhowse Churchyard [i.e. Square] ac totam illam
capellam nram in eodem construct vel edificat.
Et etiam totam illam portam nram vulgarit voc le Westgate
[i.e. of Charterhouse Square] situat et existen in paroch Sci
Sepulchri in Suburbiis die Civitatis ac tram fundum et solum
ejusdem portse ac omnia domos et scdificia supeaudem portam
edificat.
******
Actotam illam portam vocat Le Eastgate situat et existen
in parochia Sci Botolphi extra Aldersgate. . . .
Ac etiam totum illud messuagm ten et gardm cum ptin
dicto Cimitio adjacen [i.e. a House in Charterhouse Square]
situat in parochia Sci Bothi extra Aldersgate London ac modo
vel nuper in tenure sive occupac Dni Parr de Horton [i.e.
William Parr, brother of Queen Catherine].
******
Hend et tenend et gaudend pdic domus etc etc pfato
EDWARD NORTHE hered et assign suis in ppm tenend de nobis
hered et success nostr in libro burgagio diet civit nri London
et non in Capite. . . .
[It is to be observed that no mention is made here of any
mansion or messuage within the Monastery, such mansion having
yet to be constructed.]
Ill
Record office. May 4th under seal of Edward VI. Sixth
year (1553). [North to the Duke of Northumberland.
Conveyance of Charterhouse.]
EXTRACT
Totum domum et scitum nup domus sive Prioratus ppe
APPENDIX C 339
Civitatem London dissolut ac * totam illam Mansionem Sive
Capitalem messuagium [i.e. the Mansion now built, afterwards
called Howard House] ac omnia ac Singula dosnos aedificia et
struct nuper edificat intra Scitum Circum Circuitum Ambitum
Precinctiom diet nup domus sive Prioratus Carthus. [Here
follows a paragraph describing the various parts of the Mansion
within the Monastery.]
******
IV
Record office. Patent Roll 871. October 23. 1 Mary 1553
[The grant of Charterhouse back from the Queen to North
after the execution of the Duke of Northumberland].
The Queen to whom etc greeting. Know ye that we in
consideration of the good true faithful and acceptable services
which our dear servant Edwart North Knt multiplied, offered,
and performed etc . . . [Here follows the description of the
Monastery as in the gift of Henry VIII to North, 1845 ; see
Appendix C, 11.]
All which and singular the premises to our hands by the
attainder of John formerly Duke of Northumberland of High
Treason attainted have come and in our hands by reason of the
said treason now remain. . . . [The rest follows the grant of
Henry VIII in 1545, q.v.]
V
Lord North to Thomas Howard, 4th Duke of Norfolk. [The
transfer by which the Mansion became, in 1565, Howard
House.] Charterhouse Muniment Room. The document
need only be quoted in part to show that the words " Capi-
talem messuagium meum et domum mansionalem " again
occur, proving that Lord North transferred to Norfolk
a Mansion already built within the dissolved Monastery.
Totum illud Scitum et capitalem messuagium meum et
domum Mansionalem vulgariter vocatam Le Charterhowse in
Comitatu Middlesex prope civitatem London parcellam scitus
ct domus kuper Prioratus sive Monasterii Carthusiani vulgariter
vocat Le Charterhowse nere London. Ac omnia et singula
sedificia cellaria structuras solaria pomaria stagna gardina
portas Crofta inclausata parietes ac cetera hereditamenta
qusecunque. Ac omnia alia domus aedificia structuras a que-
ductus pipas plumbas et alia cujusque generis etc etc . . .
* A brief portion only is quoted for the sake of showing that the
words " totam illam mansionem sive capitalem mansionem," i.e.
the new Mansion within the Monastery appears for the first time.
The rest of the conveyance is practically the same as in Henry VIII
to North in 1545. Appendix C, ii.
340 APPENDIX C
VI
Record office. Exchequer K.R. miscell. Books No. 45 : 4 April,
32 Elizabeth 1590. [The Commissioners' Survey on Philip
Earl of ArundePs Attainder.] The document is full of
detail which bears upon the topography of Charterhouse in
the Mansion period. Portions only are quoted.
******
A parcel of land or ground commonly called Charterhouse
Churchyard with a chapel built thereon and with 24 trees
growing on said ground containing by estimation 2 acres lying
and being in the Parish of St. Sepulchre in Co Middx in the
suburbs of the City of London.
PER ANNUM (no value given).
A certain yard called the Outer Court adjacent to said parcel
of land called the Charterhouse Churchyard with buildings on
each side of the Great door or first entrance [appears to be the
Entrance Court] by said parcel called Charterhouse Churchyard
in the said yard.
PEE ANNUM 26.8.0.
A Yard called the Granary Yard with divers edifices built
above together lying on the west side of the said outer court
[apparently the properties covered by Charterhouse Hotel,
Mews, etc.].
PER ANNUM 66.8.0.
A garden called the Granary Garden enclosed by a brick
wall lying on the north part of the Granary Yard.
PER ANNUM 6.8.0.
A Capital Messuage or House called Charterhouse with
2 internal yards called Courts and with a square garden with
small fountain in the middle of the same and also with 2 ambu-
latories below and above called the Terrace, besides a tennis
court and another smaller garden on the West part of said ambu-
latories called the Terrace with separate houses and edifices
surrounding said yards and gardens constructions and edifices
and also with 2 yards one of quadrangular and the other of
triangular form adjoining said edifices on South.
PER ANNUM 58.6.8.
A parcell of ground called the Backyard divided into 2
yards one larger one smaller with stables and buildings built
thereon with a pond [the Monastery pond. The north wing of
APPENDIX C 341
pensioners' court is built across the site of it] at the north end
of the longer yard. Which said yard lying in the West as well
as the vacant piece of land there and the Tennis Court as well
as Certain Edifices on the West side of said small garden and
yard adjoining.
PER ANNUM 20.
A vacant piece of land lying in breadth between the garden
in tenure of Lord North and the said large fountain garden * and
the end of terrace on the South and the large orchard on the
North abutting on the East common road leading from Alders-
gate to Islington and on the west on the backyard above
specified [the Monks' wilderness, afterwards " Under Green "
of the School, now (1914) covered with buildings].
PER ANNUM 6/8.
A garden or orchard with a small house built thereon
containing in it cisterns and lead pipes for distributing water
brought there by pipes to the " Scaturigium " in the several
offices of the Capital messuage lying between the said vacant
piece of land on the South part the great brick wall on the North
part abutting westerly in the gardens with a pond there [this
pond was at the N.E. angle formed by Wilderness Row and
Goswell Street].
PER ANNUM 26/8.
[Here follow details of various properties, including the Bowl-
ing Alley, the resort of evill-disposed persons set up by John
Syncleere on the west side of the Square. Also the details
of various Quills of water from the great fountain of Howard
House to houses in the Square].
******
The jury find that John Syncleere holdeth by a patent made
during his lyfe by Thomas late Duke of Norfolk date 12 August
11 of the Queen's majestic (1569) that now is the keeping of the
Great House called Howard House alias Charterhouse late the
house of Edward Lord North with all the Gardens etc etc
[shows that North had already built a mansion which he trans-
ferred to Norfolk].
The remaining clause sets forth the finding of the jury as
to the attainder of Phillip late Erie of Arrundell, the forfeiture
of his possessions, rents, and revenues in Charterhouse to the
Crown. Also the issue of the said nobleman, Elizabeth aged 6
and Thomas aged 4.
* Once the great cloister with central conduit.
342 APPENDIX C
VII
Record office. Land Revenue Enrolments vol. 45 fol. B18.
Patent Roll No 1564. 29 October 43 Elizabeth 1601.
[Grant of Charterhouse to Lord Thomas Howard, Baron
of Walden [Earl of Suffolk.]]
EXTRACT
The Grant first sets forth the attainder of Norfolk and
Arundel.
******
For and in consideration of the last will of the Duke of
Norfolk and also for the natural and paternal love which said
Duke then bore for his children viz Philip then Earl of Surrey
son and heir apparent of the said Duke by his wife Mary
daughter and coheir of said Earl of Arundel and Lord Thomas
Howard, and Lord William Howard, his younger son, and also
Lady Margaret his daughter by his wife Margaret daughter
and one of the heirs of Thomas Audley of Walden dead.
And in consideration etc and for the continuation of the
possessions in the blood of the said Duke he the said Duke
granted to said Earls of Pembroke Arundel and Leicester and
William Lord Howard of Effingham and William Cecil and
William Cordell Knt that they should be seized of the manors
of [here follow the names of many manors in Norfolk] and of
and in all that Capital Messuage then commonly called or known
by the name of Howard House otherwise the late dissolved
Charterhouse beside Smithfield in C°. Middx with all its appur-
tenances and of and in an orchard and garden to same belonging.
And of all that parcel of land near called Pardon Church-
yard [still the property of Charterhouse 1914] and of 2 closes
adjacent there-to called White Webech [Whit well Beech, still
the property of Charterhouse, 1914] in the C° Middx [other
properties also mentioned].
To the use of said Duke and after to the use of such as by
his will he should direct.
And whereas the said Duke was attainted for High Treason
(1572) and whereas afterwards Philip Earl of Surrey and after-
wards Earl of Arundel was likewise attainted (1589) and whereas
said Thomas Lord Howard Baron of Walden levied a Fine to
us and our successor of all said lands (see Feet of Fines this
year 1601) know ye that for the faithful services etc of said
Thomas Lord Howard Baron of Walden we have granted him
by these presents . . . the said Capital Messuage called Howard
APPENDIX C 343
House als Charterhouse the orchard and garden etc Pardon
Churchyard and White Welbech.
To him and his heirs for ever paying us yearly
822.0.0 in two annual
equal portions.
[This is the absolute grant to Lord Thomas Howard, who,
from 1595-1601, had held it only in fee-farm.]
VIII
Record office. Patent Roll No. 1621 m. 30. James I. Date
Feb. 1, 1603. [Grant of Charterhouse to Lord Thomas
Howard, Earl of Suffolk.]
EXTRACT
A similar document, Feb. 23, 1603. The document is a
re-affirmation of James in the first year of his reign of the
grant by Elizabeth. It sets forth again all the properties as
mentioned in that grant and concludes " in as ample and full
a way as his ancestors or progenitors Thomas Duke of Norfolk
and Philip Earl of Arundel had the same."
IX
Record office. Patents Roll No. 1934. No. 6. Abstract 22 June,
9 James I, 1611. [Grant to Thomas Sutton to found a
Hospital and School at the Charterhouse which he had
lately bought from Thomas Earl of Suffolk.]
EXTRACT
The letters patent are of great length and there is much
reiteration. They are printed in full in Charterhouse, Past
and Present (Dr. Haig Brown). A resume only is here given
of the most important clauses.
The deed sanctions the transfer of the proposed Hospital
from Hallingbury to a great and large mansion house commonly
called the late dissolved Charterhouse beside Smithfield with
license to found an Hospitall and free School. It gives power to
incorporate a body of Governors who are to have perpetual
succession for ever in fact deed and name. The hospital!,
house, or place of abiding to be for the finding Sustentation and
relief of poore aged maimed needy or impotent people . . . the
Free School for the instructing teaching maintenance and educa-
tion of poor children or scholars. The nomination of such persons
to be in the hands of Thomas Sutton during his life time and
of the Governors after his death. The list of the first Governors
344 APPENDIX C
is given. The foundation to be known as the Hospital of
King James founded in Charter-house within the County of
Middlesex at the humble petition and only costs and charges
of Thomas Sutton Esquire. The Founder to name, during his
life, the Master, Preacher, Schoolmaster, Usher, Members
officer and officers of the Hospital. The Governors to do the
same after his death, with complete power to displace any
or all of the said officers, poor people, scholars, members etc.
The place to be extra-diocesan [as it remains to this day 1914].
The list of estates with which the Hospital is endowed is given —
to wit. Charterhouse itself with all the belongings as purchased
from Thomas Earl of Suffolk. The manors and lordships of
Southminster, [Cold] Norton, Little Hallingbury, alias Halling-
bury Bouchers and Much Stambridge in the County of Essex.
Bustingthorpe alias Buslingthorp and Dunnesby in the County
of Lincoln. Salthorp alias Saltrop alias Halthrop, Chilton and
Blachgrove in the County of Wilts. Appurtenances of Blach-
grove in Wroughton. The manor of Missenden in Wroughton,
Lydyerde and Tregose : the manner of Elcombe and Parke,
called Elcombe Parke : the manner of Wattlescote, alias
Wiglescete, alias Wigelscote. The Manner of Westcote alias
Wescete : the Manner of Uffcote : his lands and farms in
Broadhinton : all in the County of Wilts : The Manners of
Campes alias Castle Campes : and of Balsham in Cambs :
his messuages and lands in Hackney and Tottenham in Middle-
sex (except his manners of Littlebury and Hadstoche in Essex).
Especial provision is made that in the filling of advowsons
left by him the Governors shall give preference if possible to
Scholars Educated on his Foundation.
X
The will of Thomas Sutton [extracts].
The will is printed in full by Hearne, Bearcroft, Smythe,
and Haig Brown. The legacies amount to £12,110 17*. Sd.,
the residue of all his goods, chattels, and possessions being left
to his Foundation. A selection only of the legacies is here
given.
10£ each to the children of Richard Coxe, late Bishop of
Ely (once Headmaster of Eton).
100£ to the children of Eleanor wife of Robert Aske of
Aughton, Yorks.
100 marks to the poor of Berwick-on-Tweed.
10£ to the poor of Stoke Newington.
40£ to Mr. Gray, dwelling in Yorkshire, sometime servant
to Ambrose Earl of Warwick, or to his Children.
10£ to the Children of Henry Tutty late gunner in Berwick.
APPENDIX C 345
300£ to [his nephew] Simon Baxter or to his children.
500 marks to Francis Baxter or to his children.
£13 6s. 8d. to each of his men servants and his cook. 5 marks
to each maid and 10£ to the Children of Reynold Tomps his
late servant.
100.£ to the Fishermen of Ostend.
26. 13. 4 to the mending of the roads between Islington and
Newington.
100£ to the mending of Walden Lane between Ashden and
Walden hi Essex.
66£ 13. 4 to the amending the road between Walden and
Great Lynton in Cambs.
60£ to the amending of Horseheath Lane in Cambs.
100£ to the amending of the bridges and highways between
Southminster and Maldon in Essex.
30£ (remission of a debt) to Alderman Robert Dudley of
Newcastle-on-Tyne.
1000£ to the Chamber of the city of London for the purpose
of lending annually to ten young men free of interest for use
in their trade, to be chosen by the Lord Mayor and Aldermen
and the Dean of St. Pauls.
2000 marks to Sir Francis Popham knt husband of his
stepdaughter Ann Dudley (with special reserves and explana-
tions).
200£ to Amy Popham on her marriage, or reaching the age
of 18.
On like condition 100£ apiece to Francis, Mary, Elizabeth
Jane and Ann, the five daughters of his stepdaughter Lady
Ann Popham (with important reserves conditions and explana-
tions).
To Amy Popham if it please God she live to keep house,
3 feather beds, 3 pair of Holland Sheets with the bolsters to
them and so many hangings of tapestry as furnish her a bed-
chamber.
He appoints Richard Sutton of London Esquire and John
Law one of the Procurators of Arches his Executors.
He appoints George Abbott Archbishop of Canterbury
overseer of his will with a legacy of 40£ or a piece of plate of
that value at his choice.
He appoints Launcelot Andrews, King's Almoner his other
overseer with a legacy of 20£ or a piece of plate of equal value.
He inserts a clause by which any person who impugns
or contests the will, shall forfeit any legacy or advantage from it.
100£ to Richard Sutton (his executor).
20£ to John Hutton, vicar of Littlebury (the first Master
of Charterhouse).
10£ to the poor of Elcomb.
346 APPENDIX C
He bequeaths the Manors of Littlebury and Hadstock
to Lord Thomas Howard, Earl of Suffolk, for a consideration
of 10,000£. If the bequest is declined, the manors to be sold for
the benefit of the Hospital.
To Sir Henry Hubberd (Hobart) the Attorney General a
piece of plate value 10£ : To Mr Locksmith his clerk the sum
of ten pounds.
40£ to Jeffery Nightingale Esq. (one of the Governors).
100 marks to his Cousin William Stapleton son of Sir
Richard Stapleton, Knt.
10£ to Thomas Brown (one of the Governors) to make him a
ring.
200£ to John Law (his executor) one of the Procurators of
the Arches.
20£ to the poor of Hadstock.
20£ to the poor of Littlebury and of Balsham.
20£ to buy a bell for Balsham Steeple.
20£ to the poor of Southminster.
20£ to the poor of Little Hallingbury.
20£ to the poor of Dunsby.
200£ to the poor prisoners of Ludgate, Newgate, the two
Compters in London, the Kings Bench and the Marshalsea.
500 marks to the Corporation of Jesus College Cambridge.
500 marks to the Corporation of Magdalen College Cambridge.
5000£ to the building of his intended hospital, chappel and
school house, if he does not live to see it performed in his life-
time.
Profits arising from his interest in land at Cottingham Yorks
to the poor of Beverley : and the profits from the parsonage
of Glentham Lincoln to the poor of Lincoln.
1000£ to the treasury of his intended Hospital to begin their
stock.
10£ to the poor of Hacknew.
To Sir Edward Phillips Master of the Rolls a piece of plate
value 10£.
To Sir James Altham, one of the Barons of the exchequer
a piece of plate value 20£.
400£ to the Earl of Suffolk.
Signed by the Testator the 28th November 1611 in presence
of John Law, Leonard Houghton, Alexander Longworth,
Thomas Hall, Richard Pearce (his mark) Thomas Johnson (his
mark). Idem recognitum per testatorem Coram Jo, Crooke
quarto Decembus 1611 recognit to be the testator's last will.
Before me Henry Thoresby.
APPENDIX C 347
XI
Extract from copy of document in Charterhouse Muniment
Room headed, " By the charge and receipts of Sir Richard Sutton
the Surviving Executor of Mr Sutton his personal estate stood
thus " :—
******
Item. In gifts to Sir Francis Bacon Ld Chancellor and his
officers (including a present of a piece of plate to Sir Henry
Mountaine Ld Chief Justice value £20 18. 0 in the suit of Sir
Francis Popham in Chancery 632. 19. 6.
This entry refers to a Suit in Chancery brought in Feb. 1616
by Sir Francis Popham (husband of Ann, Sutton's stepdaughter)
against Sutton's executors, claiming the lands at Tottenham.
The Suit was dismissed on July 6, 1618. At the time of its
commencement Bacon was Attorney- General. He became
Lord Keeper, March 7, 1617, and Lord Chancellor, July 12, 1618.
XII
THE FOUNDER'S TOMB
The subjoined particulars of the Founder's Tomb, bearing
date 1613, are attached to a covenant undertaking to do the
work for £350. The signatures are Nicholas Johnson (Jansen)
alias Garrett of Southwarke, Tomb-maker, and Edmund Kines-
man of London, Citizen and Freeman.
For the enrichinge within the Arch . . . 6.0.0
For the two captaines sittinge * . . . . 10 . 0 . 0
For the four Capitalls 10 . 0 . 0
For his picture and crest f att his feete . . 10 . 0 . 0
For the two boys Labour and Rest . . . 6.0.0
For the two pellasters carved three sides apiece . 6 . 0. 0
For the three pictures, J Faith, Hope and Charitie . 15 . 0 . 0
For the Armes 6.0.0
For the two Capitalls . . . . . . 3.0.0
For the storye § over the Cornishe . . . 10 . 0 . 0
For enrichinge under the Cornishe . . . 3.0.0
For the two death's heads || and one cherubims head 5.0.0
* The above must be regarded as a previous estimate, not as an
account, seeing that many details have evidently been altered in the
execution. The captaines — bearers — are standing, not sitting.
t There is no crest at the foot of the Founder's figure.
j Pictures = coloured statues.
§ The storye is the bas relief of the preacher and the brothers.
|| This part of the design has been altered. There is one death's
head between two figures of life and time.
348 APPENDIX C
For roses and other flowers and enrichinge . . 6.0.0
For paynting and gildinge . . . . . 20 . 0 . 0
For carryinge the worke, and settinge with cramps of
iron, lyne, and bricks . . . . . 10 . 0 . 0
For working of the masonry in alablaster . . 50 . 0 . 0
For working the six columnes . . . . 15 . 0 . 0
For sawing the hard stone . . . . . 10 . 0 . 0
For working and pollishinge five ranee pellasters . 10 . 0 . 0
For working and pollishinge the lover of ranee . 8.0.0
For workinge, rubbinge, and pollishinge all the
tables both of ranee * and touch f • . . 10 . 0 . 0
For sixty foote of ranee at 10' a foote . . . 30 . 0 . 0
For eighty foote of touch . . . . . 40 . 0 . 0
For nine loads of alablaster at 6£ a loade with the
carryage. . . . . . . . 54 . 0 . 0
For workinge and pollishinge the ledger . . 10 . 0 . 0
For thirty foote of pace at 2 . 6 a foote . . 3.15.0
366 . 15 . 0
The following is the receipt of Jansen and Stone in Sir
John Soanes' museum : —
" In May 1615 Mr Janson in Southwark and I did set up
a tombe for Mr Sottone at Charter Hous for the wich we had
400£ well payed but the letell monement of Mr Lawes was
included the wich I mad and all the carven work of Mr Button's
Tombe."
Another receipt, signed by Nicholas Johnson, Edmund
Kinesman, and Nicholas Stone, date Nov. 24, 1615, is
quoted at full length in Dr. Haig Brown's Charterhouse, Past and
Present.
The original design of the Founder's figure was in full
armour, for which the drawing exists in the Muniment Room.
* Bance = yellow marble. f Touch = black marble.
APPENDIX D
Masters of Button's Hospital from the date of the Foundation
to the present time : —
1. Rev John Hulton, M.A., 1611.
2. Rev. Andrew Perne, M.A., 1614.
3. Rev. Peter Hooker, B.D., 1615.
4. Francis Beaumont, Esq., 1617.
5. Rev. Sir Robert Dallington, M.A., 1624.
6. George Garrard, Esq., M.A., 1627.
7. Edward Cressett, Esq., 1650.
8. Sir Ralph Sydenham, 1660.
9. Martin Clifford, Esq., 1671.
10. Hon. William Erskine, 1677.
11. Rev. Thomas Burnet, B.D., 1685.
12. Rev. John King, D.D., 1715.
13. Nicholas Mann, Esq., 1737.
14. Rev. Philip Bearcroft, D.D., 1753.
15. Rev. Samuel Salter, D.D., 1761.
16. Rev. William Ramsden, D.D., 1778.
17. Rev. Philip Fisher, D.D., 1804.
18. Yen. Archdeacon William Hale Hale, M.A., 1842.
19. Rev. George Currey, D.D., 1872.
20. Rev. Richard Elwyn, M.A., 1885.
21. Rev. William Haig Brown, LL.D., 1897.
22. Rev. George Edward Jelf, D.D., 1907.
23. Rev. Gerald Stanley Davies, M.A., 1908.
II
Preachers of Sutton's Hospital from the date of the Founda-
tion : —
1. Mr. Hartneys, 1613.
2. Anthony Parker, 1616, expelled.
3. William Ford, B.D., 1618, removed, being a married man.
349 2 A
350 APPENDIX D
4. Percival Burrell, M.A., 1619.
5. William Middleton, A.M., 1628.
6. * Daniel Toutville, M.A., 1630.
[7A. * Thomas Foxeley.]
7B. Peter Clarke, M.A., 1643.
8. William Adderley, M.A., 1645, during pleasure.
9. f George Griffith, M.A., with a patent for life.
10. Timothy Shircross, D.D., 1661.
11. John Patrick, D.D., 1671.
12. John King, D.D., 1695.
13. Emanuel Langford, D.D., 1715.
14. Philip Bearcroft, D.D., 1724.
15. Samuel Salter, D.D., 1754.
16. John Nichols, D.D., 1761.
17. Thomas Sanisbury, A.M., 1774.
18. William Lloyd, M.A., 1787.
19. Wilfred Clarke, M.A., 1809.
20. James Currey, M.A., 1812.
21. William Hale Hale, M.A., 1823.
22. Henry Burgess Whitaker Churton, M.A., 1842,
23. Folliott Baugh, M.A., 1844.
24. George Currey, D.D., 1849.
25. Henry Vincent Le-Bas, M.A., 1871.
26. Wm. Francis John Romanis, M.A., 1910.
27. Alexander Ramsbotham, M.A., 1912.
Ill
Schoolmasters (Headmasters) since the Foundation : —
1. Nicholas Grey, 1614.
2. Robert Grey, 1624.
3. William Middleton, M.A., 1626.
4. JRobert Brooke, 1628.
5. Samuel Wilson, 1643.
6. John Boncle or Bunkley, 1651.
* In 1642 Daniel Toutville was seqiiestered by Parliament,
who appointed a Godly preacher, one Thomas Foxeley, in his place.
The Governors refused to confirm the appointment because Foxeley
was married : " We houlding yt most juste to keepe and maintain
the ordinances of this House made with soe great judgement : and
the Executors of the Founder being parties thereto whoo knew his
intent and direclon."
t George Griffith was married, and his wife was allowed to live
in Charterhouse. The fact marks the change which had taken place
in the Assembly of Governors.
J Robert Brooke was expelled by an order of Parliament. He
was allowed to return and occupy rooms in Charterhouse at the
Restoration.
APPENDIX D 351
7. Norris Wood, 1654.
8. Thomas Watson, 1662.
9. Thomas Walker, LL.D., 1679.
10. Andrew Tooke, A.M., 1728.
11. James Hotchkis, 1731.
12. Lewis Crusius, D.D., 1748.
13. Samuel Berdmore, D.D., 1769.
14. Matthew Raine, D.D., 1791.
15. John Russell, D.D., 1811.
16. Augustus Page Saunders, D.D., 1832
17. Edward Elder, D.D., 1853.
18. Richard Elwyn, M.A., 1858.
19. William Haig Brown, LL.D., 1863.
20. Gerald Henry Rendall, LL.D., 1897
21. Frank Fletcher, M.A., 1911.
IV
Registrars since the Foundation : —
1. Thomas Hay ward, 1612.
2. Samuel Martyn, 1627.
3. John Brent, 1643, removed.
4. Edward Cressett, 1656.
5. John Holled, 1651.
6. William Taylour, 1654,
7. William Massey, 1666.
8. Spelman, 1669.
9. Lightfoot, 1674.
10. William Hempson, 1699.
11. Conway Whithorn, 1739.
12. Thomas Melmoth, 1741.
13. Henry Sayer, 1767.
14. Thomas Ryder, 1789.
15. Thomas Gatty, 1835.
16. Archibald Keightley, 1838.
17. Harry Wilmot Lee, 1877.
18. Arthur Melmoth Walters, 1910.
V
List of Governors of Sutton's Hospital since the Foundation.
[All the Sovereigns of England with their Consorts, also
Oliver Cromwell, Protector, have been Governors of Charter-
house, but (except the Protector) have taken no part in the
administration. They nominated both Brothers and Scholars
up to 1872, and Brothers only since that date.]
•s
352 APPENDIX D
1611 /George Abbott, Archbishop of Canterbury.
/ Thomas, Lord Ellesmere, Lord Chancellor.
Robert, Earl of Salisbury.
John King, Bishop of London.
Launcelot Andrews, Bishop of Ely.
Sir Edward Coke, Knight, Lord Chief Justice of England.
Sir Thomas Foster, Knight.
Sir Henry Hobart, Knight and Baronet, Lord Chief
Justice of Common Pleas.
John Overall, D.D., Dean of St. Paul's.
George Montaigne, Dean of Westminster.
Henry Thursby, Esq.
Geoffrey Nightingale, Esq.
Richard Sutton, Esq.
John Lawe, Esq.
\ Thomas Browne, Esq.
\Rev. John Hutton, M.A., Master of Charterhouse.
1612 Henry Earl of Northampton.
Sir James Altham, Knight, one of the Barons of the
Exchequer.
1614 William Earl of Pembroke.
Rev. Andrew Perne, M.A. (Master).
William Byrde, D.C.L.
1615 Lewis Proud, Esq.
Rev. Peter Hooker, B.D. (Master).
1616 Edward Earl of Worcester.
1617 Sir Francis Moore, Knight.
Sir John Doddridge, Knight.
Francis Beaumont, Esq. (Master).
1619 Francis, Lord Verulam, Lord Chancellor.
Valentine Cary, D.D., Dean of Westminster, Bishop of
St. Asaph.
1621 John Williams, D.D., Dean of St. Paul's ; afterwards
Bishop of Lincoln, Lord Keeper, Archbishop of York.
Sir Henry Montagu, Viscount Maude ville.
Sir Thomas Coventry, Knight.
1624 Robert Dallington, Clerk (Master).
Sir Henry Martyn, Knight.
1625 Sir Robert Heath, Knight, afterwards Lord Chief
Justice of England.
1626 John Donne, D.D., Dean of St. Paul's.
John Buckeridge, Bishop of Rochester.
1628 Philip, Earl of Montgomery.
Sir Ranulph Crewe, Knight, Lord Chief Justice of
England.
William Laud, Bishop of London ; afterwards Arch-
bishop of Canterbury.
APPENDIX D 353
1630 Richard Lord Weston.
Thomas Winiffe, D.D., Dean of Westminster.
Dudley Viscount Dorchester.
1631 Sir Thomas Edmonds, Knight.
1632 Henry Earl of Holland.
1633 William Juxon, Bishop of London; afterwards Arch-
bishop of Canterbury.
1634 Matthew Wren, D.D., Dean of St. Paul's ; afterwards
Bishop of Ely.
Edward Littleton, Esq. ; afterwards Lord Littleton,
Lord Keeper.
1635 Sir John Coke, Knight.
1638 George Garrard, Esq. (Master).
1639 Sir John Bankes, Knight, Lord Chief Justice of Common
Pleas.
1640 Sir John Finch, Knight, Lord Chief Justice of Common
Pleas.
1641 Robert Earl of Warwick.
Robert Earl of Essex.
1642 Sir Rowland Wandesford, Knight.
1643 Algernon Percy, Earl of Northumberland.
1644 William Earl of Salisbury.
1645 Edward Earl of Manchester.
John Glynn, Esq., Lord Chief Justice of England.
Oliver St. John, Esq., Lord Chief Justice of Common
Pleas.
John Lord Roberts of Truro.
Edward Lord Howard (of Escricke).
Sir Edmond Reeve, Knight.
John Selden, Esq.
Samuel Browne, Esq.
1646 William Lenthall, Esq. (Speaker of the Long Parliament).
1647 Peter Phesant, Esq.
1650 Philip Lord Lisle.
Sir William Armyn, Knight and Baronet.
Sir Henry Vane, Jun., Knight.
Rt. Hon. Bulstrode Whitelocke, Lord Keeper.
Rt. Hon. John Bradshaw.
Thomas Lord Fairfax.
Edward Cressett, Esq. (Master).
His Excellency, Oliver Cromwell.
John Gordon, Esq.
1651 John Lisle, Esq.
Charles Fleetwood, Esq.
1652 Lawrence Wright, D.M.
Sir Arthur Hesilrigge, Baronet.
1653 Sir John Wollaston, Knight.
354 APPENDIX D
1654 Major-General Philip Skippon.
1656 Rt. Hon. Nathaniel Fiennes.
1657 Rt. Hon. John Thurloe.
1658 Lord Richard Cromwell.
1659 Philip Lord Jones.
1660 Edward Earl of Manchester (for the second time).
Edward Lord Howard of Escricke (for the second time).
John Lord Roberts of Truro (for the second time).
Samuel Browne, Esq. (for the second time).
Algernon Earl of Northumberland (for the second time).
Sir Ralph Sydenham, Knight (Master).
Matthew Wren, Bishop of Ely (for the second time).
1661 Edward Lord Hurdon.
Thomas Earl of Southampton.
Gilbert Sheldon, Bishop of London.
Sir Orlando Bridgman, Knight and Baronet, Lord
Keeper.
1662 Anthony Lord Ashley; afterwards Lord Chancellor,
Earl of Shaftesbury.
George (Monk) Duke of Albemarle.
1663 George Morley, Bishop of Winchester.
1667 Henry Lord Arlington.
Humphrey Hinchman, Bishop of London.
Sir Jeffrey Palmer, Knight and Baronet, Attorney-
General.
1668 Sir William Wylde, Knight and Baronet.
William Earl of Craven.
Benjamin Laney, Bishop of Ely.
1669 George Duke of Buckingham.
1670 John Earl of Bridgwater.
1671 John Duke of Ormonde.
Martin Clifford, Esq. (Master) ; " Buffoon," i.e. Cup-
bearer to Charles II.
1674 Heneage Lord Finch, Lord Keeper; afterwards Lord
Chancellor and Earl of Nottingham.
James Duke of Monmouth and Buccleuch.
Thomas Earl of Danby, Prime Minister.
1675 Rt. Hon. Henry Coventry.
John Dolben, Bishop of Rochester.
1677 Hon. William Erskine (Master).
Henry Compton, Bishop of London.
William Sancroft, Archbishop of Canterbury.
1682 Sir Francis North, Knight ; afterwards Lord Guildford,
Lord Chancellor.
1683 George Marquis of Halifax.
1684 Henry Duke of Beaufort.
1685 Rev. Thomas Burnet, LL.D. (Master).
APPENDIX D 355
Lawrence Earl of Rochester.
Henry Earl of Clarendon.
Robert Earl of Ailesbury.
George, Lord Jeffreys, Lord Chancellor.
John Earl of Mulgrave.
1686 Robert Earl of Sunderland.
Peter Mews, Bishop of Winchester.
1687 George Earl of Berkelye.
Daniel Earl of Nottingham.
1688 James Duke of Ormonde.
1689 Sir John Holt, Knight, Lord Chief Justice of England.
Charles (Talbot) Earl of Shrewsbury; afterwards Duke
of Shrewsbury.
1693 John Tillotson, Archbishop of Canterbury.
1695 Sir John Somers, Knight, Lord Keeper ; afterwards Lord
Somers, Lord Chancellor.
Thomas Tenison, Archbishop of Canterbury.
1697 Thomas Earl of Pembroke and Montgomery.
William Marquis of Halifax.
1698 Sir George Treby, Knight, Attorney-General.
1700 Sir Nathan Wright, Lord Keeper.
John Viscount Lonsdale.
John Earl of Bridgwater.
1701 Simon Patrick, Bishop of Ely.
Sir Edward Ward, Knight, Attorney-General.
1707 William Earl Cowper, Lord Chancellor.
Sidney Earl Godolphin, Prime Minister.
1709 Charles Duke of Somerset.
1710 John Moore, Bishop of Ely ; afterwards Archbishop of
Canterbury.
1711 Sir Simon Harcourt, Knight ; afterwards Lord Harcourt,
Lord Chancellor.
1713 Robert Earl of Oxford.
William Earl of Dartmouth.
John Robinson, Bishop of London.
1714 Sir Thomas Parker, Knight ; afterwards Lord Parker,
Lord Chancellor, then Earl of Macclesfield.
Jonathan Trelawney, Bishop of Winchester.
1715 Rev. John King, D.D. (Master).
1716 H.R.H. George Prince of Wales.
William Wake, Archbishop of Canterbury.
Charles Earl of Sunderland ; afterwards Prime Minister.
1717 Sir Peter King, Knight; afterwards Lord King, Lord
Chancellor.
1721 James Duke of Chandos.
William Talbot, Bishop of Durham.
Thomas Duke of Newcastle.
356 APPENDIX D
1722 Sir Robert Eyre, Knight, Lord Chief Justice of the
Common Pleas.
1723 Edmund Gibson, Bishop of London.
Charles Viscount Townsend.
1724 Rt. Hon. Robert Walpole, Prime Minister.
1727 Thomas Lord Trevor.
William Duke of Devonshire.
1729 Richard Earl of Scarborough.
1730 Sir Robert Raymond, Attorney-General ; afterwards
Lord Raymond.
Lionel Duke of Dorset.
1732 Spencer Earl of Wilmington.
1733 William Lord Harrington.
Sir Philip Yorke, Knight, Lord Hardwicke, Lord
Chancellor.
1734 Charles Duke of Grafton.
1736 Charles Lord Talbot, Lord Chancellor.
1737 William Duke of Devonshire.
John Potter, Archbishop of Canterbury.
Nicholas Mann (Master).
1738 Sir Joseph Jekyll, Knight.
Henry Earl of Pembroke and Montgomery.
1740 Charles Duke of Richmond.
1743 Sir William Lee, Knight.
1744 Rt. Hon. Henry Pelham, Prime Minister.
1745 Sir John Willes, Knight, Attorney-General.
1748 John Duke of Bedford.
1749 Thomas Sherlock, Bishop of London.
1750 John Earl Gower.
Charles Duke of Marlborough.
1751 John Earl of Sandwich.
1753 Rev. Philip Bearcroft, D.D. (Master).
1754 John Earl of Granville.
Robert Earl of Holderness.
1755 George Admiral Lord Anson.
1756 John Duke of Rutland.
1757 William Duke of Devonshire.
Matthew Hutton, Archbishop of Canterbury Elect.
Granville Levison, Earl Gower.
1758 Thomas Seeker, Archbishop of Canterbury.
William Lord Mansfield, Lord Chief Justice of England.
1761 Robert Lord Henley, Lord Chancellor; afterwards Earl
Northington.
Rev. Samuel Salter, D.D. (Master).
1762 John Earl of Bute, Prime Minister.
Richard Osbaldeston, Bishop of London.
Charles Earl of Egremont.
APPENDIX D 357
Charles Marquis of Rockingham; afterwards Prime
Minister.
1764 Rt. Hon. George Grenville.
George Earl of Halifax.
George Duke of Marlborough.
1765 Richard Terrick, Bishop of London.
1768 Charles Lord Camden ; afterwards Lord Chancellor.
1769 Frederick Cornwallis, Archbishop of Canterbury.
1770 Augustus Henry Duke of Grafton, Prime Minister.
1771 Frederic Lord North, Prime Minister.
William Henry, Earl of Rochford.
1772 Henry Lord Apsley.
1777 Henry Earl of Suffolk.
1778 Thomas Viscount Weymouth.
Rev. William Ramsden, D.D. (Master).
1779 Robert Lowth, Bishop of London.
Edward, Lord Thurlow, Lord Chancellor.
1781 William Earl of Dartmouth.
1783 Thomas Lord Sydney.
John Moore, Archbishop of Canterbury.
1787 Rt. Hon. William Pitt, Prime Minister.
1792 Beilby Porteus, Bishop of London.
William Wyndham, Lord Grenville; afterwards Prime
Minister.
1793 Alexander Lord Loughborough, Lord Chancellor.
1794 Rt. Hon. Henry Dundas ; afterwards Lord Melville.
Lloyd Lord Kenyon, Lord Chief Justice of England.
1796 John Frederick, Duke of Dorset.
William Henry Cavendish, Duke of Portland ; afterwards
Prime Minister.
1799 John Earl of Chatham.
1800 George John, Earl Spencer.
1802 John Lord Eldon, Lord Chancellor.
1803 Rt. Hon. Henry Addington, Prime Minister.
Edward Lord Ellenborough, Lord Chief Justice of
England.
1804 Rev. Philip Fisher, B.D. (Master).
1805 Charles Manners Sutton, Archbishop of Canterbury.
Robert Banks, Lord Hawkesbury; afterwards Lord
Liverpool, Prime Minister.
1806 Rt. Hon. Charles James Fox.
Thomas Lord Erskine, Lord Chancellor.
Rt. Hon. William Wyndham.
1809 Charles Earl Grey ; afterwards Prime Minister.
John Randolph, Bishop of London.
1810 Rt. Hon. Spencer Perceval, Prime Minister.
1811 John Jefferies, Earl Camden.
358 APPENDIX D
Francis Earl Moira.
1812 Edward Venables Vernon, Archbishop of York.
1814 Dudley Earl of Harrowby.
1817 William Howley, Bishop of London ; afterwards Arch-
bishop of Canterbury.
1819 John Earl of Westmoreland.
1823 Rt. Hon. George Canning ; afterwards Prime Minister.
1827 Rt. Hon. Robert Peel; afterwards Sir Robert Peel,
Prime Minister.
Frederick John, Viscount Goderich, Prime Minister.
1828 Arthur Duke of Wellington, Prime Minister.
1829 John Singleton, Lord Lyndhurst, Lord Chancellor.
1834 Charles James Blomfield, Bishop of London.
1835 Sir Charles Manners Sutton, Baronet.
Sir Nicholas Conyngham Tindal, Knight, Lord Chief
Justice of Common Pleas.
1838 Charles Christopher Lord Cottenham, Lord Chancellor.
1840 William Viscount Melbourne, Prime Minister.
1842 James Archibald Lord Wharncliffe.
Ven. William Hale Hale, M.A. (Master).
1844 Richard William Penn, Earl Howe.
1845 Walter Francis Duke of Buccleugh and Queensberry,
K.G.
William Earl of Devon.
1846 Charles Cecil Cope, Earl of Liverpool, G.C.B.
Lord John Russell, Prime Minister; Earl Russell in 1861.
1847 Edward Copleston, Bishop of Llandaff, Dean of St.
Paul's.
1848 Thomas Lord Denman, Lord Chief Justice of England.
John Bird Sumner, Archbishop of Canterbury.
Thomas Musgrave, Archbishop of York.
1849 Henry Marquis of Lansdowne, Lord President of the
Council.
1850 Rt. Hon. Fox Maule, Secretary at War ; Lord Panmure
in 1852, Lord Dalhousie in 1860.
1851 Sir Cresswell Cresswell, Knight, a Justice of the Common
Pleas.
Thomas, Lord Truro, Lord Chancellor.
1852 Edward Geoffrey, Earl of Derby, Prime Minister.
1854 George Earl of Aberdeen, Prime Minister.
1855 Robert Monsey, Lord Cranworth, Lord Chancellor.
1858 Dudley Earl of Harrowby.
1859 Archibald Campbell Tait, Bishop of London, Archbishop
of Canterbury in 1869.
Sir George James Turner, Knight, a Lord Justice of the
Court of Appeal in Chancery.
1860 Charles Earl of Romney.
APPENDIX D 859
1861 Charles Thomas Longley, Archbishop of York, of
Canterbury in 1862.
1863 Henry John Viscount Palmerston, Prime Minister.
William Reginald Earl of Devon.
William Thomson, Archbishop of York.
Frederic Lord Chelmsford, Lord Chancellor.
1866 Rt. Hon. William Ewart Gladstone, Prime Minister.
1867 Sir William Erie, Knight, a Justice of Common Pleas.
1869 John Jackson, Bishop of London.
William Page, Lord Hatherley, Lord Chancellor.
1870 John Winston, Duke of Marlborough.
Hugh MacCalmont, Lord Cairns, Lord Chancellor ; after
wards Earl Cairns.
1872 Rev. George Currey, D.D. (Master).
1874 Roundell (Palmer) Lord Selborne, formerly Lord
Chancellor.
1874 Adelbert Wellington Brownlow, Earl Brownlow.
1878 Anthony Wilson Thorold, Bishop of Rochester; after-
wards of Winchester.
1879 Benjamin, Earl of Beaconsfield.
1880 Charles Duke of Richmond and Gordon, K.G.
1881 Gathorne (Hardy) Viscount Cranbrook, G.C.S.I.
1881 John Gilbert Talbot, Esq., M.P. for Oxford.
1883 John Duke, Lord Coleridge, Lord Chief Justice of
England.
1883 Edward White (Benson), Archbishop of Canterbury.
Granville George, Earl of Granville.
1884 John Rogerson, Lord Rollo.
1885 Frederick (Temple), Archbishop of Canterbury.
Charles Henry Rolle, Lord Clinton.
Canon Richard Elwyn, M.A. (Master).
1887 William Walsham How, Bishop of Bedford.
1888 Hugh Lupus Duke of Westminster, K.G.
1889 Henry Reward Molyneux, Earl of Carnarvon, P.C.,
D.C.L.
1891 Robert Arthur Talbot, Marquis of Salisbury, I.C.G., P.C.,
D.C.L., Prime Minister.
Charles Cecil John, Duke of Rutland, K.G.
William Connor, Bishop of Peterborough, Archbishop
Elect of York.
Richard Assheton, Viscount Cross, G.C., G.C.B., D.C.L.,
LL.D., F.R.S.
William Dalrymple (Maclagan), Archbishop of York.
1894 Charles Lindley, Viscount Halifax.
1896 Sir Richard Everard Webster, Attorney-General ; after-
wards Lord Chief Justice of England, Viscount
Alverstone.
360 APPENDIX D
Randall Thomas (Davidson), Bishop of Winchester;
afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury.
1897 Mandell (Creighton), Bishop of London.
Canon William Haig Brown, LL.D. (Master).
1901 Arthur Foley (Winnington-Ingram), Bishop of London.
Frederic Sleigh Earl Roberts, K.G., K.P., G.C.B.,
G.C.S.I., G.C.J.E., V.C., Field Marshal.
1903 William George Spenser Scott, Marquis of Northampton.
William Earl of Stamford.
Stuart Bishop of Rochester; Bishop of Southwark, 1905.
Sir Richard Claverhouse Jebb.
1904 James Edward Hubert, Marquis of Salisbury.
1906 John Compton Lawrance, Judge of King's Bench.
1907 Rev. George Edward Jelf, D.D. (Master).
1908 Rev. Gerald Stanley Davies, M.A. (Master).
1910 William St. John, Viscount Midleton.
Cosmo Gordon (Lang), Archbishop of York.
1911 Sir Henry Seymour King, K.C.I.E.
1913 Sir Ernest Murray Pollock, K.C., M.P.
1914 Edgar Charles Sumner (Gibson), Bishop of Gloucester.
James Viscount Bryce, O.M.
1915 Paul Sandford, Baron Methuen, G.C.B., G.C.V.O.,
C.M.G.
1916 Thomas Ethelbert Page, Litt. D.
1921 Viscount Peel.
VI
The Governing Body of the School from 1872 :
1872 Archibald Campbell, Archbishop of Canterbury.
William Archbishop of York.
Walter Duke of Buccleugh and Queensberry, K.G.
William Reginald Earl of Devon.
Charles Marsham, Earl of Romney.
Dudley Earl of Harrowby, K.G.
Frederick Lord Chelmsford.
The Rev. C. J. Vaughan, D.D., Master of the Temple.
The Rev. George Currey, D.D., Master of Charterhouse.
The Hon. Justice George Denman, M.P.
The Rev. Professor Palmer, Archdeacon of Oxford.
Professor Sir Richard Claverhouse Jebb.
George Busk, Esq., F.R.S.
P. M. Duncan, Esq., F.R.S.
Gordon Whitbread, Esq.
1874 John Bishop of London.
1876 Rev. E. W. Blore, Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge.
1878 Roundell Lord Selborne.
APPENDIX D 361
1880 Richard Everard (Webster), Lord Chief Justice of
England, Viscount Alverstone.
1882 Samuel Chichester, Lord Carlingford, Lord Privy Seal.
Edward White (Benson), Archbishop of Canterbury.
1883 John Gilbert Talbot, M.P., Privy Councillor.
1884 Anthony Wilson (Thorold), Bishop of Winchester.
1885 Frederick (Temple), Archbishop of Canterbury.
Canon Richard Elwyn, M.A., Master of Charterhouse.
Herbert Clifford Saunders, Q.C.
1886 George Carey Foster, F.R.S.
1887 Schomberg, Henry, Marquis of Lothian, K.T., L.S.D.
1889 Rt. Hon. Sir John Ferguson Bo wen, G.C.M.G.
John Duke, Baron Coleridge, Lord Chief Justice.
1890 Frederick Earl Beauchamp.
1891 John Rogerson, Lord Rollo.
Sir Edward Fry, Lord Justice.
John Whittaker Hulke, F.R.S., F.R.C.S.
Rev. Lancelot Ridley Phclps, Oriel College, Oxon.
1893 Sir Richard Claverhouse Jebb, D.C.L., LL.D.
1894 Schomberg, Henry, Marquis of Lothian.
George Henry Darwin, F.R.S.
1895 Randall Thomas Davidson, Archbishop of Canterbury.
1896 Reginald Walter Macan, LL.D., Master of University
College, Oxon.
1897 Mandell (Creighton), Bishop of London.
Frederick (Temple), Archbishop of Canterbury.
Canon William Haig-Brown, LL.D., Master of Charter-
house.
1900 William Dalrymple (Maclagan), Archbishop of York.
1901 Arthur Foley (Winnington-Ingram), Bishop of London.
George Carey Foster, F.R.S.
1902 Sir Oliver Lodge, Principal of Birmingham University.
Professor Charles Scott Sherrington.
1903 Herbert Edward (Ryle), Bishop of Winchester.
1905 John Alderson Footc, K.C.
1906 Sir Lawrence Nunns Guillemard, C.B., Deputy Chair-
man, Inland Revenue.
1907 Canon Reginald St. John Parry, Dean of Trinity College,
Cambridge.
Professor Ernest Arthur Gardner, M.A.
George Edward Jelf, D.D., Master of Charterhouse.
William St. John Fremantle, Viscount Midleton.
1908 Professor Sir William Tildcn, F.R.S.
1909 Rev. Gerald Stanley Davies, M. A., Master of Charterhouse.
1910 Sir Kenneth Augustus Muir Mackenzie, K.C., K.C.B.
Cosmo Gordon (Lang), Archbishop of York.
1912 Arthur Foley (Winnington-Ingram), Bishop of London.
Thomas Ethelbert Page, Litt.D.
APPENDIX E
I
SOME DISTINGUISHED CARTHUSIANS SINCE THE FOUNDATION
UP TO 1872
This list consists almost entirely of those whose names are
recorded in the Dictionary of National Biography. Scholars on
the Foundation are marked with an asterisk (*). Living Car-
thusians are mentioned only in cases where they were at
Charterhouse in London.
The dagger (f) before a name implies a Scholar on the
Foundation (" Gownboy ").
Addison, Joseph, 1672-1719. Author.
Alderson, Sir Edward Hall, 1787-1857. Senior Wrangler, First
Smith's Prizeman, Chancellor's Medallist, Judge.
Alverstone, Richard Everard Webster, 1842-1916. First Viscount
Alverstone, Lord Chief Justice of England.
Armstrong, John, 1813-56. Bishop of Grahamstown.
Arnould, Sir Joseph, 1814-86. Chief Justice of Bombay, Writer.
Ashurst, William Henry, 1725-1807. Judge of King's Bench,
succeeded Sir William Blackstone.
Babington, Charles Cardale, 1808-95. Botanist, Archaeologist.
tBaden-Powell, General Sir Robert, 1851-living. Defender of
Mafeking, Founder of the Boy Scouts.
Barrow, Isaac, D.D. Master of Trinity, Scholar, Mathematician,
Preacher.
Beddoes, Thomas Lovell, 1803-49. Poet.
fBearcroft, Philip, D.D., 1695-1761. Master of Charterhouse,
1653—61, Author of An Historical Account of Charterhouse.
fBenson, Martin, 1689-1752. Bishop of Gloucester, 1735.
Bindley, James, 1737-1818. Antiquarian and Book-collector.
fBlackstone, Sir William, 1723-80.
fBode, John Ernest, 1816-74. Scholar, Divine.
fBonney, Henry Kaye, 1782-1862. Divine.
Boone, James Shergold, 1799-1859. Scholar, Man of Letters.
Boteler, William Fuller, 1777-85. Senior Wrangler, First Smith's
Prizeman, Commissioner in Bankruptcy.
fBowen, Sir George Ferguson, L.L.D., 1821-99. Privy Councillor,
Governor of Victoria, and of Mauritius.
Bradford, Samuel, D.D., 1652-1731. Bishop of Carlisle, and of
fBurney, Charles, D.D., 1757-1817. Classical Critic.
362
APPENDIX E 363
Carpenter, Richard Cromwell, 1812-55. Architect.
fChurton, Edward, 1800-74. Archdeacon, Spanish Scholar.
fClark, George Thomas, 1809-98. Engineer, Archaeologist.
Cockle, Sir James, 1819-95. Mathematician, Chief Justice of
Queensland.
tCotton, Richard Lynch, D.D., 1794-1880. Provost of Worcester
College, Oxon., Vice Chancellor.
fCrashaw, Richard, 1613 (?)-49. Poet.
Cresswell, Sir Cresswell, 1794-1863. Judge of Court of Common
Pleas.
fCullum, Sir Thomas Grey, 1741- . Botanist, Antiquarian,
Bath King-at-Arms.
Currey, George, D.D., 1816-75. Fourth in Classical Tripos,
Cambridge, and Fourteenth Wrangler, Master of Charterhouse,
1872-85.
Currie, Sir Frederick, Bart., 1799-1875. Vice-President of the
Council of India.
Curzon, Robert, Fourteenth Baron Zouche, 1810-73. Antiquarian,
Man of Letters.
Davies, John, 1748-89. President of Queens' College, Cambridge,
Vice-Chancellor.
Dawes, William Rutler, 1799-1868. Astronomer.
Day, Thomas, 1748-89. Author of Sandford and Merlon.
Dennis, George. Antiquarian, Author of Cities and Cemeteries of
Etruria.
fDes Vceux, Sir George William, 1834-1909. Diplomatist, Governor
of Sta. Lucia, Fiji, Hongkong, Newfoundland.
Drummond-Hay, Sir John Hay, 1816-93. Privy Councillor.
fDryden, Sir Erasmus Henry, Bart., 1669-1710. Son of John
Dryden.
tDurham, William, D.D., died 1686. Preacher and Writer.
Eastlake, Sir Charles, 1793-1865. President of the Royal Academy.
Eastwick, Edward Backhouse, 1814—83. Orientalist.
Edgworth, Michael Packingham, 1812-81. Orientalist, Botanist.
fEllenborough, Edward Law, First Baron Ellenborough, 1750-1818.
Lord Chief Justice.
Elwyn, Richard, Canon. Senior Classic, Headmaster of Charter-
house, Master of Charterhouse.
Fane, John, Tenth Earl of Westmoreland, 1759-1841. Politician,
Privy Councillor, Lord-Lieut, of Ireland.
Farre, Arthur, 1811-57. Physician, Writer.
Farre, Frederic John, 1804-86. Botanist, Physician.
Felton, Henry, D.D., 1679-1740. Divine.
Fitzwilliam, Richard, Seventh Viscount Fitzwilliam, 1745-1816.
Founder of Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge.
Fonblanque, John Samuel Martin de Grenier, 1787-1865. Legal
Writer, one of the Founders of the Union Society, Cambridge.
Forbes-Robertson, Sir Johnston, \853-living. Actor.
fGibson, Edgar Charles Sumner, 1848-Zivingr. Bishop of Gloucester.
Gibson, Thomas Milner, 1806-84. Privy Councillor.
Giles, John Allen, D.C.L., 1808-84. Editor and Translator.
fGosnold, John, 1625-78. Baptist Preacher.
JGreaves, Thomas, 1612-76. Orientalist.
Grote, George, LL.D., 1794-1871. Historian of Greece.
Hale, William Hale, 1795-1872. Master of Charterhouse, 1842-72,
Archdeacon of London.
364 APPENDIX E
Hamilton, William John, 1805-67. Geologist.
Hare, Julius Charles, 1795-1855. Man of Letters.
Havelock, General Sir Henry, Bart., 1795-1857. Believed
Lucknow.
Hayter, Henry Heylin, 1821-95. Statistician.
fHenshaw, Joseph, D.D., 1603-79. Bishop of Peterborough.
JHewlett, Joseph Thomas James, 1800-47. Novelist.
tHildesley, Mark, D.D., 1698-1772. Bishop of Sodor and Man.
fJames, John Thomas, D.D., 1786-1828. Bishop of Calcutta.
fJebb, Sir Richard Claverhouse, 1841-1905. Senior Classic, Pro-
fessor of Greek at Glasgow, M.P. for Cambridge University,
1891-1905.
fJenkinson, Charles, First Lord Liverpool, 1728-1808. Statesman.
Jenkinson, Robert Barker, Second Lord Liverpool, 1770-1828.
tJohnson, John, 1759-1833. Divine.
Jones, Owen, 1809-74. Architect and Designer.
fJones, William, of Nayland, 1726-1800. Divine, Writer.
Jortin, John, 1698-1770. Divine, Ecclesiastical Writer and Critic.
fKeene, Edmund, D.D., 1714-81. Bishop of Ely and Chester.
fKing, John, D.D., 1660-1737. Archdeacon of Colchester, Canon of
Bristol, Master of Charterhouse, 1715-37.
|Law, Edward, First Baron Ellenborough, 1750-1818. Lord Chief
Justice (see Ellenborough).
fLaw, John, 1745-1810. Bishop of Elphin.
Law, George Henry, D.D., 1761-1845. Bishop of Chester and of
Bath and Wells.
Leech, John, 1817-64. Artist.
Liddell, Henry George, D.D., 1811-98. Compiler with Dr. Scott
of the Greek Lexicon, Dean of Christ Church, Oxford, 1855-91.
fLocker, Arthur, 1828-93. Novelist, Journalist.
Lovelace, Colonel Richard, 1618-58. Poet.
fLushington, Edmund Henry, 1811-93. Senior Classic, Professor
of Greek at Glasgow.
Lushington, Henry, 1812-55. Person Scholar, First Class Classic.
fMajendie, Henry William, 1754-1830. Bishop of Chester and of
Bangor.
Maples, Chauncy, 1852-1895. Bishop of Zanzibar.
Maule, Fox, Earl of Dalhousie, 1809-18. Secretary of State for
War, 1885-88.
Mills, Charles Augustus, 1850-1918. Engineer and Archaeologist.
tMontagu, Basil, Knight, 1770-1851. Legal Writer, Philanthropist.
Mozley, Thomas, 1806-1893. Divine and Journalist.
Murray, John, 1808-92. Publisher.
fNettleship, Henry, 1839-93. Hertford and Craven Scholar, Oxford,
Professor of Latin at Oxford.
Palgrave, Francis Turner, 1824. Balliol Scholar, Man of Letters.
Palgrave, William Gifford, 1826. First Class Lit.Hum., Consul-
General, Siam, Traveller, Writer.
fPalmer, Edwin, 1824-95. Scholar of Balliol, Archdeacon of Oxford,
Canon of Cnristchurch.
Rawlinson, Sir Christopher, 1806-88. Indian Judge, Chief Justice
Supreme Court of Madras.
Rodd, Thomas, 1763-1822. Bookseller, Author, Inventor.
tRussell, John, D.D. Headmaster, 1811-1832.
APPENDIX E 365
tScott, Alexander John, D.D., 1768-1840. Rector of Southminster
(a Charterhouse living), Naval Chaplain, served on the London
(Admiral Sir Hyde Parker) at Copenhagen, 1801, on the Victory
(Admiral Lord Nelson) at Trafalgar, 1805, Nelson's Private
Secretary, Chaplain to the Prince Regent.
Scott, John, 1798-1846. Surgeon, Writer.
t Scott, Charles Perry, 1817- living. First Bishop of North China.
Seward, William, 1747-99, Man of Letters.
tSiddons, Henry, 1774-1815. Actor (son of Mrs. Siddons).
fSteele, Sir Richard, 1072-1729. Author.
fStewart, John, 1749-1822. Traveller, Writer, known as " Walking
Stewart."
Stone, Rev. Samuel John, 1837-1918. Author of various poems and
hymns (" The Church's one Foundation," etc.).
Storks, Sir Henry Knight Storks, 1811-1874. Soldier and Adminis-
trator, Governor of Jamaica and of Malta.
Templeman, Peter, 1711-69. Physician.
Thackeray, William Makepeace, 1811-63. Author.
Thirlwall, Connop, 1797-1875. Bishop of St. David's, Historian of
Greece.
Thomas, John, 1696-1781. Bishop of Peterborough, 1747 ; of
Salisbury, 1757 ; of Winchester, 1761-81.
Toller, Sir Samuel, died 1821. Advocate-General of Madras.
fTooke, Andrew, 1673-1732. Classical Scholar, Author of Tookc's
Pantheon, Headmaster 1728-32.
Tupper, Martin, 1810-89. Author of Proverbial Philosophy.
Venables, George Stovin, 1810-88. Chancellor's Medalist for
English Verse. Barrister, Writer.
Walford, Edward, 1823-97. Scholar of Balliol, Man of Letters, and
Journalist.
f Wesley, John, 1703-1791. Divine,
f Williams, Roger, 1610-83. Founded the Settlement of Rhode
Island (a memorial in Chapel Cloister).
fWollaston, Francis John Hyde, 1762-1823. Natural Philosopher,
wrote The Variation of Species.
jWollaston, William Hyde, 1706-1822. Physiologist, Chemist.
Wray, Daniel, 1701-83. Antiquarian, gave " The Officers' Library "
to Charterhouse.
II
SOME CARTHUSIAN WORTHIES NOT EDUCATED AT THE SCHOOL
BUT CONNECTED WITH CHARTERHOUSE
This list consists mainly of those whose names appear in
the Dictionary of National Biography.
Thomas Sutton, 1532—1611. Master of Ordnance for Berwick and
the North of England to Queen Elizabeth. Founder of Sutton's
Hospital.
Berdmore, Samuel, 1740-1802. Headmaster, 17(39-91.
Burnet, Thomas, 1635-1715. Master, 1685-1715.
Bushnan, John Stevenson, 1808-84. Writer on Medical Subjects,
went blind, Pensioner.
Clifford, Martin, d. 1677. Master, 1671-77. Buffoon about the
Court (i.e. cupbearer) to Charles II.
Cosyn, Benjamin, fl. about 1620. Organist, Composer.
2 B
366 APPENDIX E
Crusius, Lewis, 1701-75. Headmaster, 1748-69.
Dallington, Sir Robert, 1561-1637. Master, 1624-37.
Dowton, William, d. 1883. Pensioner, Actor.
Erskine, William, d. 1685. Master, 1677-85.
Gray, Stephen, d. 1736. Pensioner, Pioneer of Electric Science.
Green, Jonathan, 1788-1864. Pensioner, Medical writer.
Grey, Nicholas, 1590-1660. Headmaster, 1614-24.
Grieve, James, d. 1773. Physician to Charterhouse.
Haig-Brown, William, LLD. Headmaster, 1864-97. Master,
1897-1907.
Horsley, William, 1774-1858. Organist, 1838-58, Musical Composer,
wrote the music of "Carmen Carthusianum."
Hullah, John Pyke, 1812-84. Organist, 1858-84, Musical Composer,
assisted Horsley and Phillott in "Carmen Carthusianum."
Hulme, Nathaniel, 1732-1807. Physician to Charterhouse, 1774-
1807.
Hume, Tobias, d. 1645. Pensioner, 1629, Soldier of Fortune,
Musician and writer on music.
Macbean, Alex, d. 1784. Pensioner, 1780, one of the six amanuenses
for Johnson's Dictionary.
Mann, Nicolas, d. 1753. Master, 1737-53.
Morton, Maddison, 1811-91. Pensioner, 1881, Actor, Author of
Box and Cox, 1847.
Pepusch, John Christopher, Mus.Doc., 1667-1752. Musician and
Composer, Organist of Charterhouse. Buried in Charterhouse
Chapel.
Pilkington, William, 1758-1848. ) Architects, added to
Pilkington, William Redmond, 1789-1844. / London Charterhouse.
Raine, Matthew, 1760-1811. Headmaster, 1791-1811.
Settle, Elkanah, 1648-1724. Pensioner, 1718-1723-27.
Stevens, Richard John Samuel, 1757-1837. Musician and Composer
of many glees, Organist of Charterhouse, 1796-1837. Buried in
the Chapel Cloister.
Williams, Zachariah, 1673-75. Medical practitioner, Man of
Science, Inventor. Became a Brother, 1729. Friend and
contemporary of Stephen Gray. Expelled in. 1748 for general
breaches of rule and for having, without permission, allowed his
daughter to live with hi in two years in the Hospital. Friend of
Dr. Johnson and Jones of Nayland (q.v.).
APPENDIX F
CARMEN CARTHUSIANUM
" Carmen Carthusianum." The words by Henry Wright
Phillott, Assistant Master, Charterhouse. The Music by
William Horsley, organist to Charterhouse : assisted by John
Hullah, afterwards organist to Charterhouse.
CABMEN CARTHUSIANUM
W. HORSLHV, Mus. Bac. Oxon. — (Organist of Charterhouse, A.u. 1838-
„• 1858.)
^v
Laeti laudato Doininurn,
Fontem perennem boni,
Recolentes Fundatoris
Memoriam Suttoni.
Omnes laudate Dominum,
Vos quibus singularia
Suttonus bona prsebuit ;
Et dornum et bursaria.
Senes, laudate Dominum,
Keddatis et honorem
Suttono, quibus requies
Paratur post laborem.
Pueri, laudate Dominum,
Quoscumque hie instituit
Suttonus bpnis literis
Et pietate imbuit.
Ergo laudate Dominum,*
Omnes Carthusiani,
Puerique rus amantes,
Et senes oppidani.
Laeti laudate Dominum,
Surgat 6 Choro Sonus,
O FLOREAT ^ITEHNUM
CARTHUSIANA DOMUS.
*iThis stauza was added by Dr. Haig-Browu after the removal
of the school.
367
APPENDIX G
LIST OF CARTHUSIANS
SERVING IN THE BRITISH AND ALLIED
FORCES
From August 4, 1914, to November 11, 1918
AND IN THE SUBSEQUENT RUSSIAN CAMPAIGNS
The letter and date preceding each name denote boarding-house
and year of leaving School.
The ranks given are, in most cases, the highest held during the
War.
*=Mentioned in Despatches. t— Killed, or died of wounds or
sickness. J = Wounded. p= Prisoner of War.
V 1891*tAbadie, E. H. E. (D.S.O.), Major, 9th Lancers
V 1896***tAbadie, R. N. (D.S.O.), Lt.-Col., 2nd 60th Rifles
D 1915 Abbott, W. F., 2nd Lt., 4th East Surrey Regt.
D 1912 fAbbott, T. W., 2nd Lt.. R.F.C.
8 1871 *Abdy, A. J. (C.B., C.B.E.), Brigadier-General, R.A.
P 1909**JJAbdy, J. R. (Italian Silver Medal for Valour, Croix de
Guerre), Capt., Sherwood Rangers
H 1912 Abdy, R. H. E., Lt., 15th (The King's) Hussars
V 1911 JAbell, J. G., Capt., 4th Leicestershire Regt.
P 1915 *Abercrombie, G. F., Surgeon Sub-Lt., R.N.V.R.
S J910 Acheson, J. G., Lt., 3rd Seaforth Highlanders
D 1907 Acheson-Gray, C. G. A., Lt., 4th Dorsetshire Regt.
V 1876 *Acland, A. D. (T.D.), Lt.-Col., R. 1st Devon Yeomanry ;
Assistant Director of Labour
H 1916 tAdams, J. S., 2nd Lt., 7th The Queen's
P 1912 t Adams, R. N. (M.C.), Capt., 7th R. Fusiliers «fc R.F.C.
S 1909 Agar, T. F., Lt., R.E.
g 1903 Agelasto, E. J., 2nd Lt., 8th Manchester Regt.
W 1895 Aglionby, F. B., 2nd Lt., Kent R.G.A.
P 1900 Aikman, T. T., Capt., R.A.S.C.
B 1911 tAitcbison, R. A. C., 2nd Lt., 1st R. Lancaster Regt.
P 1915 fAked, R. B. C. (M.C.), Lt., 5th North Staffordshire Regt.
R 1907JiAlbu, V. C., Lt., R.F.A.
W 1892 Aldrich-Blake, R. M., Pte., R. Fusiliers
B 1899 t Alexander, L. W., Capt., 1st (King's) Dragoon Guards
S 1912*JAllan, J. L. (M.B.E.), Lt., R.F.A. ; War Office
B 1899 *Allau, P. B. M., Capt., 3rd London Scottish ; War Office
308
APPENDIX G 869
G 1902 Allden, J. E., Lt., General Last ; Staff
G 1907***Allden, S. G. (D.S.O.), Major, B.A.S.C. ; D.A.Q.-M.-G.
B 1892 tAllen, C. B. (M.C.), Capt.. 6th Manchester Regt.
S 1888 Allen, E. C. (I.C.S.), 2nd Lt., I.A.B.O., attd. Labour
Corps
g 1909**Allen, J. R., Capt., R.A.S.C.
V 1904 Allen, Rev. L. J., Chaplain, H.M.S. Courageous
W 1903**Allen, R. H. (M.C.), Major, R.A. ; D.A.A.-G.
B 1891*fAlston, C. H. T., Major, R.A.F.
G 1908 f Alston, C. McC., Lt., 2nd R. Scots Fusiliers
B 1891 Alston, I. G. P., Trooper, Indian Defence Force
B 1887 tAlston, J. W. H., Major, 1st Arg. & Suth. Highlanders
D 1908 Aman, J. G., Capt., Hants B.G.A.
g 1905 JAmes, L. G., Capt., 5th Grenadier Guards
g 1878 *Ames, O. H., Lt.-CoL, 2nd Life Guards
B 1913 JAmsden, W. F., Lt., 12th London Regt.
H 1881 "Ancrum, G. W., Capt., R.A.M.C.
G 1895 Anderson, C. A. Surgeon, Lt., H.M.S. Victory
B 1915 JAnderson, D. L., Capt., The Black Watch
G 1893 * Anderson, E. S. J., Major, Military Accounts Dept., I. A.
L 1914 Anderson, G. B. (M.C.), Major, 1st E. Lanes. Bde., B.F.A.
G 1901 tAnderson, G. W., Capt., R.A.S.C.
P 1915 Anderson, J. E. S., Sub-Lt., H.M.S. Revenge
G 1903 *Anderson, J. G., Capt., R.G.A.
G 1910 {Anderson, K. A. N. (M.C.), Capt., 1st Seaforth Highlanders
G 1890* J Anderson, W. H., Capt., London Scottish
V 1897 Anderton, C. S., 2nd Lt., R. Sussex Regt.
D 1893 fAnderton, E., Lt., E. African Field Force (Censor)
B 1887 Andrews, A. W., 2nd Lt., R.E.
L 1903 J Andrews, L. H. G., Capt., Bedford Regt. & Egyptian
Army
g 1910**JJAngas, L. L. B. (M.C., Belgian Croix de Guerre), Major,
1st attd. 4th Cheshire Regt.
H 1912 JAnsley, S. S. (M.C.), Capt., Berkshire R.H.A.
S 1896 fAntrobus, C. A., Capt., 1st K.O. Scottish Borderers
S 1894 fAntrobus, Hugh, Major, 6th Cameron Highlanders
S 1908***Antrobus, R. H. (M.C.), Major, R.F.A.
L 1912 Apcar, C., Rifleman, London Rifle Brigade
B 1911 |Arbuthnott, J., Lt., 2nd Grenadier Guards
S 1898 JArcher, H. W., Major, Northumberland Pus. ; D.A.Q.-M.-G.
V 1903 Archer, P. A. E., Capt., R. 1st Devon Yeomanry
W 1896 Argles, H. D., Lt., 3rd County of London Yeomanry
W 1900 Argles, R. M., Lt., R.A.S.C.
W 1913 JArkwright, L., Lt., R.F.A.
H 1898 Armitage, N. C., Lt., R.G.A.
B 1897 * Armitage, W. A. (D.S.O.), Major, 3rd York & Lancaster
Regt. & M.G.C. (Motor)
V 1890 Armstrong, F. P. (O.B.E.), Commander, R.N.V.B.
g 1883 *Armstrong, G. D. (D.S.O.), Bt. Col., 12th B. Warwick Regt.
L 1905 Armstrong, H. M., Gunner, 3rd Canadian F.A.
g 1902 Armstrong, M. D., Lt., 8th Middlesex Begt.
B 1900 Armstrong, B., Lt., B.A.S.C.
k 1902***JArmstrong, W. F. (D.S.O.), M.C. with Bar), Major,
B.G.A.
G 1913**Arthur, J. S. (M.C.), Lt., B.F.A., attd. B.A.F.
W 1901 Arundel, A. D. S., Capt., B.A.S.C.
D 1912 tAscroft, B. G. L., 2nd Lt., 10th Manchester Begt.
D 1884 Ashby, G. K., Capt., British Columbia Begt. ; Staff Lt.
P 1897 Asprey, G. K., Capt., Scots Guards, attd. B.A.O.C.
870 APPENDIX G
W 1882******Asser, Sir J. J. (K.C.M.G., K.C.V.O., C.B., Legion
of Honour, Croix de Guerre, Russian Order of St.
Anne, Belgian Order of the Crown & Croix de Guerre,
Japanese Order of The Sacred Treasure, Portuguese
Military Order of Aviz, Ordre du Me"rite Agricole),
Lieut.-General on Lanes of Communication
G 1915*fAstley, E. D. D'O., Capt., 3rd R. Berkshire Regt.
V 1876**Atherton, T. J. (C.B., C.M.G.), formerly 12th Lancers,
Bt. Col., 6th Reserve Cavalry & Labour Corps
g 1915 JAtkins, L. O., Lt., 3rd East Surrey Regt.
H 1914 JAtkinson, A. F., Lt., R.E.
P 1883******Atkinson, E. H. de V. (C.B., C.M.G., C.I.E., Legion
of Honour, Belgian Order of the Crown, Portuguese
Military Order of Aviz, French and Belgian Croix de
Guerre), Major- General ; Chief Engineer
S 1894 * Atkinson, G. B., Major, 3rd Northumberland Fusiliers ;
Assistant Controller of Labour
S 1898* {I Atkinson, G. M. (D.S.O.), Major, 2nd 60th Rifles
S 1900 JAtkinson, G. N., Capt., 2nd Somerset L.I.
g 1 908 *f Atkinson, H. N. (D.S.O.), Lt., 3rd attd. 1st Cheshire Regt.
g 1907* 'Atkinson, K. P. (M.C.), Major, R.F.A. & R.A.F.
W 1913 JAtkinson, L. O., Lt., 7th The King's (Liverpool Regt.)
W 1909 *Atterbury,